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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/adventuresofmodeOOblan 



THE ADVENTURES OF 
A MODERN OCCULTIST 



THE ADVENTURES OF 
A MODERN OCCULTIST 



BY 



OLIVER BLAND 




NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1920 






i>H 



COPYRIGHT, 1920 

By dodd, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. 









gfte ©qfatn & IBobm Company 

BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
RAHWAY NEW JERSEY 



SEP 28 !C2u 
CI.A576617 



INTRODUCTION 

The individual who deals with the by-paths and 
mysteries of that great Science which we term 
loosely Occultism, courts neither personal no- 
toriety nor publicity for the strange proceedings 
in which he plays a part. 

I have always been an energetic student of 
psychic matters, drawn thereto by the posses- 
sion of certain unusual gifts with which Nature 
has endowed me. (Throughout the history of 
mankind there have always been a certain num- 
ber of individuals who have kept alive the sacred 
fire and held the secret keys of many mysteries, 
and from time to time an advance in general 
human knowledge or in an applied art or science 
has revealed to the vulgar some small part of 
the outer mysteries that have always been 
known to the initiates. These disclosures are 
hailed as discoveries and set in their ordered 
place in the catalogue of human knowledge.) 

There are in this book certain disclosures of 
hidden facts which are given to the world simply 



vi INTBODUCTION 

because the time is ripe when they should be 
more fully known and their revelation is coun- 
selled by wisdom. 

Human nature has always suffered from its 
lack of discrimination between Prophets and 
False Prophets, and one of the greatest difficul- 
ties that besets the Occultist is to know what is 
safe to reveal. It is for this reason that secrets 
are hidden from the vulgar and the charlatan, 
fpr these things must be hidden lest they are 
turned to base ends. 

The revival of deep public interest in psychic 
matters is only a matter of time, and then those 
things which have been of absorbing interest 
to the few will become of vital interest to the 
many. 

The following chapters are simply transcripts 
of some of the astoundingly interesting matters 
which have been reposing for years in my diaries 
and note-books. 

They have been set out in conventional nar- 
rative form with no great changes except of 
names and places and the elimination of the 
rather involved scientific terminology of the 
psychologist and the laboratory. In these days 



INTRODUCTION vii 

when men are turning from the crude material- 
ism of the nineteenth century and the true scien- 
tist is the last person to deny the realities 
which were deemed mythical a few short years 
ago, they may serve to fill a certain need. 

An interest in Occultism is common to most 
people, but a deep study of its principles and its 
phenomena is attainable only by the few. It is 
not advisable to seek transcendental experiences 
without a sound working knowledge of the root- 
springs of these phenomena, and one of the pur- 
poses of this volume is to render invaluable 
assistance to those who possess psychic gifts in 
greater or lesser degree. 

The Spiritualist, the Theosophist, and the 
student of Psychic Eesearch will all find in these 
pages much to interest them and much to pon- 
der. It throws light in some of the dark places 
which have seemed obscure to those of the 
modern schools of thought who have not studied 
ancient knowledge. 

As it is impossible to expound an infinite mass 
of fact within the limits of a slender volume, 
I have added footnotes here and there which will 
direct any interested reader to further sources 



viii. INTRODUCTION 

of information than my condensed text affords, 
but the purpose of the book is directed to the 
general reader rather than to the student or 
specialist who will doubtless know more than 
these pages can tell him. 

Oliver Bland. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Dead Rapper . . . . 1 

II. The Automatist 17 

III. Astral Light and Psycho-Las- 

TROMETER . . . . .36 

IV. An Experiment on the Theory of 

Protectee Vibration ... 56 

V. Sex in the Next World ... 76 

VI. The Reality of Sorcery ... 93 

VII. Incense and Occultism . . . 117 

VIII. Beasts and Elementals . . . 141 

IX. Possession ...... 157 

X. Some New Facts and Theories . . 171 

XI. Oriental Occultism .... 194 



"Read not to contradict and confute, 
not to believe and take for granted 
~. . . . . but to weigh and consider." 

Bacon's Essays. 



\ 






THE ADVENTURES OF 
A MODERN OCCULTIST 



THE ADVENTURES OF A 
MODERN OCCULTIST 

CHAPTER I 

THE DEAD RAPPER 

I had known Harry Carthew as a second-year 
man at Oxford. He never completed his course 
or took a degree because family reasons, some 
catastrophe of some kind or another — made it 
imperative for him to earn a living at once. As 
an undergraduate he was an ardent anti- 
Spiritualist. 

He dropped out of sight of our little world 
and I had only heard of him casually as having 
something to do with oil wells in Mexico and 
had not come into contact with him for years. 
I was therefore rather surprised to receive a 
letter from him which showed that he was in 
London and knew that I was working on re- 
search subjects. His letter was couched in 
rather non-committal terms, and though he was 

l 



2 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

a man whom I had never known well, he ex- 
pressed an anxiety to meet me again and lay- 
before me certain psychical problems that were 
puzzling him. 

I make it an invariable rule never to discuss 
psychic matters with people who are ignorant 
or sceptical of them, unless the sceptics are of a 
class sufficiently educated to be able to appre- 
ciate the absolute facts of the phenomena as- 
sociated with Spiritualism. 

It is impossible to convince a non-scientific 
person by facts, as he can never assure himself 
that the possibility of fraud has been absolutely 
eliminated. A scientist or an engineer can as- 
sure himseTf fairly easily of the genuineness or 
otherwise of phenomena provided that he is 
given every latitude for research. But it is 
difficult to convince either a clergyman or an 
ordinary medical man of the reality of any 
psychic phenomena because he is not mentally 
trained in the same inexorably logical processes 
of thought as are the engineers and scientists. 

Experience has taught me to mistrust the man 
who approaches with indirect advances to the 
subject of Spiritualism. I prefer the definite 



THE DEAD RAPPER 3 

challenge of a critical journalist who demands 
facts and judges on facts, for it is undoubtedly 
an axiom that the Seeker after Truth, however 
sceptical he may be, has no hostile influence in 
a properly constituted circle. 

It has ever been a matter of regret to me that 
the mass of Spiritualists hold the fallacious idea 
that a sceptical influence can hinder a seance. 
For it is not the lack of belief or disbelief of the 
one or few sceptics that weakens the influence. 
It is the mass belief of the whole circle in the 
hostile influence of the sceptic that does the 
harm. 

After thinking matters over I decided that it 
might be wrong to prejudice Carthew by his 
undergraduate views. After all, some years had 
passed, and if every Oxford man held to the 
eccentric habits and beliefs of his puppy days 
the world would be a sorry place. I wrote to 
him asking him to dine with me at my club 
during the following week. 

He had changed so much that when he entered 
the smoking room I did not recognize him. 
Tropical sunlight had bronzed and wrinkled his 
skin, his eyes had the clear hard steel-grey 



4 A MODEEN OCCULTIST 

f adedness of the blue iris that comes to men who 
have gazed long across deserts. Malaria had 
thinned down his form and his hands were big- 
veined and tremulous with quinine. 

Over the meal he told me a good deal about 
his life abroad, and I realized something of the 
deadly loneliness of a white man's life in the 
dull oil fields of Mexico. Four other whites 
to speak to and for the rest native peons, In- 
dians and a sprinkling of Chinese coolies. 

A bottle of good wine is a splendid lubri- 
cant for the human tongue, and the Burgundy 
—a "Clos du Poi," '84— soon eased him of all 
awkwardness. Over the coffee and cigars he 
came to his point. 

" You still go on with Spiritualism, don't you, 
Grey?" 

"Yes," I answered him, "but I thought that 
you did not believe in it." His answer almost 
shocked me with its violence. 

"God! but I wish that I did not!" He was 
silent with emotion for a moment, then re- 
sumed: "You know I never believed in it at 
the House. I always thought you fellows were 
simply running it as a craze, but up at Los 



THE DEAD EAPPER 5 

Chicharras — that was the third big oil gusher 
that the Company owned — there was a Cornish 
mining engineer, Bill Tregarthen. 

"He was a queer fish, a silent man; squat- 
shaped, broad as he was long and full of queer 
fancies. He had a little planchette board that 
he used to consult about everything, and I have 
seen him sit there in the patio of the office 
building with the little jigger dancing about 
over reams of paper. 

"I thought he was crazy, but he persuaded 
me to try the thing, and I got messages, too. 
One day it spelt out a message from Ellen, and 
Ellen has been dead for four years — she was 
my old nurse— Ellen 

' 1 Even then I was only half convinced. One 's 
brain plays one strange tricks down there in 
the Tierra Caliente, and I have seen an up- 
turned mountain standing on its head in the 
desert — mirage of course, and I used to think 
the planchette mental mirage, subconscious 
stuff of some kind — and I didn't believe. 

"Then Tregarthen used to laugh at me for 
a fool, and one night he blazed up into a strange 
bit of rage and stood there in the moonlight 



6 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

shaking his fist at me. 'We Cornish folk have 
known the unwrit lore for all time,' said he. 
'Old odd people we are and we know old odd 
things. I tell yon. I will tell you that I am 
right when I am dead. You will not listen to 
me now, but you shall listen then, indeed.' 

"Lots of the stuff he raved at us that night, 
but I and another man at last calmed him down 
and got him off to bed. I thought little enough 
of it at the time, and a week later I went back 
from Los Chicharras to the Offices at Tam- 
pico. 

"I suppose it was a month later that I heard 
the first knock. It was past midday, right in 
the heart of the siesta hour. Not a soul mov- 
ing, the very dogs silent in the streets, and the 
whole place a blinding blaze of sunlight. 

"I knew at once — that's the odd thing about 
it. / knew instantly in my heart that Tregar- 
then was dead. 

"That was six months ago, and since then 
I keep on hearing the raps. I know that Tre- 
garthen is keeping his pledge, but I cannot an- 
swer him back; I cannot get into touch with 
him. 



THE DEAD RAPPER 7 

"Now tell me this — with all your knowledge 
of these things, can you help me?" 

I asked him what he had done, and he told 
me a long chronicle of visits to mediums in 
New York, of an attempt to talk through a voo- 
doo woman in New Orleans, and of honest, pa- 
tient sittings in a little suburban circle in Lon- 
don. 

Carthew was clearly desperate and absolutely 
in earnest. I knew without his telling me what 
was at the back of his mind. 

The problem was a peculiar one, for here 
was a live man to all intents haunted by a mali- 
cious spirit now on another plane. Carthew 's 
character was a strong one, though of a low 
and violent type. This mental persecution had 
produced a prodigious feeling of hatred for the 
dead man — a feeling of hatred that had not ex- 
isted when he was alive, for then the hatred 
was all on Tregarthen's side. 

There was also the possibility that the knock 
was pure hallucination and not a genuine clair- 
audient phenomenon at all. 

I asked Carthew if he could give me partic- 
ulars of how Tregarthen died, and I was not 



8 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

surprised to learn that his end had been a vio- 
lent one. 

A small oil gusher had broken out as an off- 
shoot from the larger one. In order to cut off 
the flow and waste of oil it is the practice to 
force a dynamite cartridge into these small 
leads. This when exploded breaks the natu- 
ral channel of the oil and blocks the 
outlet. 

Tregarthen, through an accident or careless- 
ness — he was a deep drinker — had destroyed 
himself when preparing the charge. 

I asked Carthew if he was prepared to at- 
tend a seance or two and if he would put him- 
self completely in my hands. He assented read- 
ily, reasserting his dominant desire to be able 
to talk back to Tregarthen. 

I was holding private seances twice a week 
then, but my little circle was, though powerful 
enough for research work, quite unsuitable for 
dealing with an abnormal case of undesired 
communication. During the week I got into 
touch with a private medium whose faculty of 
clairaudience was coupled with an excellent ner- 
vous system, and I reinforced the circle by the 



THE DEAD EAPPEB 9 

addition of Dr. Miller,* who, though not a pro- 
fessed Spiritualist, is no sceptic concerning oc- 
cult phenomena and is admittedly one of the 
most successful practitioners of curative psy- 
chology that we have to-day. 

A few days later Carthew came to my cham- 
bers in the Temple and was introduced to the 
members of the circle. I placed him on the 
left-hand contact side of the medium and low- 
ered the lights. 

The medium engaged in this case was under 
double controls, one a spirit called "Louis," 
the other a rather elusive and intermittent con- 
trol that answered to the name of "Monteca- 
tini." 

The trance state was entered almost imme- 
diately and "Louis" took control. I asked him 
to find Tregarthen and he showed considerable 
reluctance, insisting that he was "not there." 
The control "Louis" was then dispossessed by 
"Montecatini," who answered in an entirely 
different voice and showed a distinct and sep- 
arate personality. 

* All names of people and places have been changed, but 
Dr. Miller's cures of " shell shock " during the war have shown 
that one's estimate of his powers was perfectly correct. 



10 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

"I can find him," said Montecatini, and 
almost on the echo of the words a distinct 
audible rap came from the ceiling of the 
room. 

Carthew recognized it instantly and flinched 
as if it were a personal blow at him. 

"Have you got Tregarthen there ?" I asked. 

"No, they won't let him come here," was 
the answer. 

"Why won't they let him come?" 

"Afraid of him." 

"Who is it rapping, then?" 

"It's a sent rap for somebody. I didn't do 
it." 

"Who is the rap for?" 

"For the brown man." (Carthew was sun- 
burnt.) 

"He wants to speak to the spirit who sends 
it." 

"He can't, it's from a bad spirit." 

"But you said you could find Tregarthen." 

"I have found him, but I can't bring him." 

"Why not?" 

"He is too heavy." 

"What do you mean?" 



THE DEAD EAPPER 11 

"Too heavy — too low down — too much 
hatred." 

"Can't Louis help you bring hunt" 

This was answered after a pause by the voice 
of Louis. 

"We will try if you all help — but the brown 
man is hindering us." 

I then determined to break the circle and set 
Carthew on a chair outside. "If you want to 
get through to Tregarthen," I told him, "you 
must subdue that hatred of yours. I am going 
to try for Tregarthen by the direct voice 
method." 

I placed an ordinary gramophone trumpet on 
a light table within the circle, then we rejoined 
hands and concentrated. 

' ' Can you get Tregarthen now 1 " I asked. 

"Yes, he is coming — but he doesn't want to 
come. ' ' 

"I want him to speak to us through the trum- 
pet," I told them. 

Almost immediately there were three knocks 
on the table close by the trumpet. Then the 
voice came out of the trumpet, not out of the 
medium, but it was the voice of Montecatini. 



12 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

"He's a bad spirit and he won't talk," said 

the control. 

"Ask him if he knows who's here?" 
"Carthew!" blared the trumpet m the voice 

of Tregarthen. 

I heard the crash of Carthew's chair falling 
back as he rose, and then his words: 

I I Tregarthen — at last ! ' ' 

The trumpet chuckled at him, a hard sar- 
donic chuckle, and it was a dreadful thing to 
hear. 

"Stop that, Tregarthen," I said sharply. 
"Now listen to me. You must stop sending 
these knocks. You have proved to Carthew 
that you were right, and for the .future there 
is no sense in it." 

Again the trumpet began to chuckle. 

"I want Carthew — here," said the voice of 
Tregarthen. "I want him to keep me com- 
pany where I am now." 

The medium began to writhe uneasily, and 
I suddenly realized that something dangerous 
had happened. The two normal controls, 
"Louis" and " Montecatini, " whom we had sent 
to fetch Tregarthen 's spirit, had disappeared 



THE DEAD RAPPER 13 

and Tregarthen himself had taken over con- 
trol. Something of a spirit of uneasiness and 
a general sense of danger began to spread 
through the circle. 

I called to Carthew to come into the circle 
again and to cross his hands, grasping my wrist 
and Miller's, so as not to break the chain when 
entering. 

' ' Now man ! ' ' I told him, i l here is your chance. 
We have Tregarthen here, and we will help you 
all we can. You must fight him with the whole 
of your will-power. Defy him, raise him to 
anger, and at the crucial point I will do some- 
thing which will destroy his power over you 
for ever! Now!" 

Carthew 's grip burnt into my wrists as he 
took hold of himself, and then all the bitter, 
dominant hatred that was in the man flamed 
out. 

He stood in the circle towering above us on 
our chairs and he poured into that trumpet a 
breadth of bilingual Spanish and English in- 
vective that would have led to murder any- 
where. 

He paused for breath and from the trumpet 



14 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

came no chuckle, but a spluttering, stammering, 
furious attempt to reply. I had no need to 
prompt him to go on. He laced into his ghostly- 
antagonist as if he had the earthly body there 
in front of him. All the pent-up hatred of the 
past months winged his words. The conscious- 
ness of his torment made his quarrel just, and 
at the height of his peroration I concentrated 
the whole of my psychic energies and made the 
four exorcism signs of the martinist ritual, bid- 
ding Tregarthen begone, never to return and 
never to be able to send a rap, and instantly 
broke the circle. I then roused the medium 
from the trance with a couple of simple passes. 

The reaction from the violence of the seance 
left us all spent and shaken. The medium re- 
covered, remembering nothing, but feeling un- 
usually exhausted. Later experiments with her 
showed that the domination by the Tregarthen 
control was purely temporary and that " Louis' ' 
and "Montecatini" had reasserted command. 

My own opinion is that nothing but the in- 
tense "hate concentration" of Carthew toward 
his ghostly antagonist could have enabled Tre- 
garthen to assume control at all. 



THE DEAD KAPPER 15 

It was a duel of wills between the living and 
the dead, fought over the narrow no-man 's land 
of the earth and spirit planes, and I am not 
sure that it was not a duel which ended fatally 
for the soul of Tregarthen. Carthew at any 
rate was free of all trouble afterwards, but wild 
horses could not drag him to a seance. 

Miller was more convinced by this astonish- 
ing seance than by far more material phenomena 
that he had seen. The following day, though, 
he sent me an explanation of the whole affair 
argued out on his own lines. He held that Car- 
thew was the subject of an obsession and that 
the whole of the phenomena were due to sub- 
conscious hypnotism of the medium alternatively 
by me as a believer in Spiritualism and by Car- 
thew. 

The direct voice he ascribed to unconscious 
or subconscious ventriloquism by the medium, 
and he pointed out that the words uttered by 
Tregarthen were precisely what one would ex- 
pect Carthew to say if Carthew were in Tre- 
garthen J s place. In other words, we were pres- 
ent at an amazing duel between Carthew 's con- 
scious mind and an obsession of his subcon- 



16 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

scious mind that had built itself into a malig- 
nant identity. 

It is interesting as a psychological theory, 
but in point of fact I hold it to be entirely 
wrong. We argued it out a good deal together, 
but experiments in psychic science can seldom 
be repeated, and, as I say, Carthew refused to 
submit to any further attempt to evoke Tre- 
garthen. 

As a man I sympathize with him, and he 
was really very grateful to us — but as a scient- 
ist I would have liked to try again in order to 
attempt to convince Miller. 



CHAPTER n 

THE AUTOMATIST 

A well-known psychic investigator once jok- 
ingly complained to me that the telephone serv- 
ice of the spirit world seemed to be as unre- 
liable and badly damaged as that of Great 
Britain. Certainly, communication is often 
freakish and intermittent, and the ethical 
value of the teachings received at great length 
and painstakingly transcribed is often com- 
pletely valueless. 

It must be remembered that we who are con- 
ducting research in psychic matters have a poor 
range of instruments or tools to work with. 
There must inevitably be the human medium, 
and long experience has taught me that in the 
case of automatic writing one must be prepared 
to recognize the intrusion of the medium's own 
thought-processes into the record received from 
the spirit world. 

That these interpolated writings are conscious 

17 



18 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

frauds by the mediums we can unhesitatingly 
deny, but they appear to be either unconscious 
records of the medium's own thoughts or else 
the re-transmitted subconscious thought-pro- 
cesses of the medium echoed back by the con- 
trol. 

I have hopes that in the future we shall be 
able to devise an appliance for the recording 
of automatic writing in which the function of 
the medium will be purely that of a bridge 
between the two planes and in which the physi- 
cal act of writing will be mechanically per- 
formed.* 

The difficulty in automatic writing lies in the 
association of ideas, and one word written by 
a planchette or spelt out by an ouija traverser 
leads to the stimulation of a train of thought 
in the subconscious mind even though the con- 
scious brain may be in the trance state. 

* I carried out a long series of experiments with the idea 
of developing an automatic recorder operating on the lines of 
the familiar tape machine, and experimented at length both 
in London and in Paris, where my work was done in con- 
nection with the student Du Plessis, who was one of the heroes 
who gaye his life at Verdun. Latterly we abandoned the idea 
of an actual print-registering machine for a device designed 
to register impulses on a wax cylinder, something on the 
lines of a phonograph. Some results were obtained, but the 
machine was not successful or reliable. 



THE AUTOMATIST 19 

The difficulty is to piece together what can 
be termed the true spirit messages out of the 
mass of pseudo-communications that surround 
them. The analysis of the familiar examples 
of " cross-correspondence' ' are a valuable guide 
in the complexities that are involved in the 
question. 

A popular idea of the difficulty of communica- 
tion can be gained by imagining a man in a 
telephone exchange in London trying to talk to 
Newcastle. He can go from instrument to in- 
strument and speak through, but all the instru- 
ments keep on going out of order, so that only 
disconnected fragments of communication pass 
over one wire. 

This would not matter if the person with 
whom he wishes to talk were also in an ex- 
change at Newcastle. He, too, could pass to 
other instruments, but we must imagine the 
mortal recipient of spirit messages as a sub- 
scriber with only one defective instrument.* 

* It is a saddening and depressing thought to think of a 
recently passed over spirit racing from medium to medium in 
an attempt to get through bits of messages to an individual 
on this plane. The spirit of F. W. H. Myers had to com- 
municate through mediums as distant as Mrs. Holland in 
India and Mrs. Verrall at Cambridge. Later communications 
were received in complex fashion from other sources and the 



20 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

Difficult as the subject of automatic writing 
is, it is from these writings that the Spiritual- 
ist conception of life in the next world is 
gleaned. 

Many a student has found eloquent, fluent, 
and convincing description of the life beyond 
the veil flow from his pen when the spirit con- 
trols were working well. Other writers have 
had accounts of terrors beyond the veil: shock- 
ing and astonishing revelations of new concepts 
of evil, exotic violences of the soul, and even 
direct incitements to the commission of criminal 
acts in this plane. 

Spiritualists are accustomed to divide these 
spirits into classes of good and bad, and it has 
been assumed on all too slender grounds that 
only the "good" spirits tell the truth about the 
other planes. 

There are bad and lying spirits, just as there 
are wicked and untruthful men, but latterly 
there has been a distinct tendency to suppress 
all mention of the bad communicators and to 
attempt the organization of Spiritualist 'and 

whole had to be collected by the Research Officer of the S.P R. 
before they made any sense at all. Proceedings S.P.R , Vols. 
XX to XXV inclusive. 



THE AUTOMATIST 21 

psychic investigation as an unorthodox ascend- 
ing sect organized as a distinct church or re- 
ligious body. This tendency would be fatal to 
the progress of occult investigation. 

The professional mediums, on the other hand, 
realize that to attain financial success, organi- 
zation, and the establishment of a mediumistic 
hierarchy is essential. Bad spirits are bad busi- 
ness and it is bad form to mention them out- 
side certain circles. 

Any investigator of experience will recognize 
at once that the spirits of suicides are frequent 
communicators to private research circles, pri- 
vate automatists and others, but it is an un- 
deniable fact that in public circles our leading 
exponents now never admit that any of the 
spirits who communicate have been anything but 
mortals whose end was normal, or more re- 
cently, those who were killed in battle. 

There is more in Spiritualism than the mere 
assurance to inquiries that life on the other 
side is very beautiful, that vocations similar 
to those on earth are followed there and that 
there is a steady upward progression. 

These things dominate the minds of a certain 



22 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

section of the English Spiritualists, and their 
tacit negation of the other darker side of the 
revelations is entirely contrary to French, Rus- 
sian, and certain Latin-American schools of 
thought. 

The history of all religions and analysis of 
their tenets reveal one great outstanding fact. 
There has always been an element of fear and 
terror connected ^ith all conceptions of the 
after-life. There is nothing in revealed Spirit- 
ualism to suggest that abstract justice is more 
prevalent on the next plane than on this imper- 
fect earth. The very fact of the admitted ex- 
istence of bad and evil spirits capable of 
malice, is in itself fatal to the bed of rose-leaves 
theories. 

In science it is the abnormal properties of a 
new gas, compound, or element that lead scien- 
tists to study it, so in the realm of psychic 
science it is only through close study of the ab- 
normal that we can attain to any clear idea of 
the normal. 

It has been cast at me as a reproach that I 
have pursued vain and extraordinary paths of 
research, not disdaining to delve into dark se- 



THE AUTOMATIST 23 

crets of occultist ritual whose proceedings would 
be unorthodox and blasphemous if laid bare to 
the orthodox and anaemic Spiritualist circles of 
Balnam. 

Yet Shamonnism is Spiritualism, and the old 
schools of sorcery and art magic held psychic 
secrets that are still reproducible but yet inex- 
plicable in these twentieth-century days. 

One of the most wonderful automatists I ever 
met was the late Jules Carrier. A tall, spare 
figure, black-bearded, aquiline-nosed, vividly 
pale in complexion, he had dark hazel eyes with 
brown mottled rings about the pupil that sug- 
gested in a vague way something feline or leop- 
ard-like. 

I met him quite by chance in a bookshop in 
the Rue de Valenciennes whose, proprietor had 
written to me about some curious early nine- 
teenth-century manuscripts that had come into 
his possession. 

These books consisted of some rather com- 
monplace manuscripts of certain philosophical 
transactions dealing with occult phenomena. 
Paris in the early thirties of the last century 
was seamed with secret organizations devoted 



24 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

to scientific and political studies. The great im- 
pulse of the Revolution had produced in turn 
Napoleon and then the Bourbon reaction. The 
strong arm of the clerical party drove the phil- 
osophers underground, and only from time to 
time can one find these peculiar archives of oc- 
cultist activity in odd booksellers' shops and 
the libraries of students. 

The proprietor of the shop knew my inter- 
est in these matters and had before been at pains 
to secure me certain personal souvenirs from 
his library of Eliphas Levi,* so whenever an 
odd "Grimoire'' or early matter on occultism 
fell to his lot he would put it by against my 
next visit. 

He it was who introduced Carrier to me as 
a fellow-student, but he made it abundantly clear 
that Carrier was too poor to be a book buyer 
and that he himself looked on him as a peculiar 
acquaintance rather than as a customer. 

We fell into conversation, and I was delighted 
to find that Carrier had a wide and erudite 
knowledge of early books on magical practice. 

* The library and papers of Alphonse Louis Constant are, I 
believe, still m existence but inaccessible. 



THE AUTOMATIST 25 

This lie told me he had gained principally by 
spare-time study at the Librairie de Paris, but 
also from the loan of books from friends. He 
had, it appeared, catalogued several private col- 
lections of works on psychic and supernormal 
subjects. 

I took him off to lunch with me at the 
Cafe Bastien, and he explained that he was 
completing a catalogue or bibliography of books 
on magic published previously to 1850. "There 
are," said he, "a number of missing works re- 
ferred to by contemporary authors. Of these 
there is little knowledge, but little by little I 
am rewriting them." 

"Automatic writing or original deductive 
work?" I asked him. 

"Automatic — pur et simple," he replied. 
"My control is called Fernand de Feques and 
was a monk of the Abbey of Saint-Barnabe near 
Blagues. Thanks to his help, I have recovered 
amazing things that were lost." 

He sank his voice as he told me and his leop- 
ard eyes seemed to glow golden as the wine in 
his glass. "I know the secrets of the lost inner 
ritual of the Illuminati," he told me. "I have 



26 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

recovered Pietro Zarantino 's invocation, and 
could I only master ancient Greek I could lay 
the secrets of the Baechse bare. But their con- 
fused script paralyses my hand and I must keep 
to French and Latin.' ' 

I knew too much of the vast breadth and her- 
itage of knowledge that the Hermetic philoso- 
phers inherited from the Gnostics to doubt his 
words. Eevealed knowledge may sometimes ap- 
pear to be withdrawn for a while, but it will 
inevitably be re-disclosed. 

Having an appointment to keep, I made a 
note of his address and promised to resume our 
^acquaintanceship on another day. 

A week later I had had leisure to go through 
my manuscripts. They were very interesting, 
but verbose, and were full of curiously involved 
obliquities of meaning and contained some pecu- 
liar Hebrew charms of Kabbalistic significance. 
By either bad luck or the design of some earlier 
owner, two pages of the invocatory ritual for 
the raising of the spirits of the dead were miss- 
ing. 

It occurred to me that Carrier might be able 
to fill the gap by means of automatic writing, 



THE AUTOMATIST 27 

so I wrote to him suggesting the attempt and 
asking him to my rooms. He replied by return, 
expressing his willingness to help, and adding 
that his control had assented, but desired me 
to visit him in his own rooms in order that he 
might not be disturbed by novel surroundings. 

The next night I went to Carrier's. He lived 
in one of those dull meandering streets that rise 
from the mass of the city toward Montparnasse. 
The house was an old tumble down warren, dirty 
and ill-kept, the various floors let out in rooms 
or suites of apartments to tenants who were none 
too particular in their choice of lodging. By the 
light of a match I examined the grimy cards 
pinned in the hallway, and at last located 
Carrier's name as owner of the back room on 
the third floor. 

He opened to my knock and I found myself 
in a room which made no pretension to disguise 
the poverty of its tenant. Most of his furniture 
was books. A globeless gas jet burnt feebly 
over a side table on which were some dishes and 
there was an old and uncleanly box bed in the 
corner. In the centre of the room was a heavy 
old fashioned circular pedestal table and on this 



28 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

he had laid out glasses, a bottle of wine, and 
paper. 

He showed me his books, and for a while we 
discussed Guldens tubbe.* I looked at some of 
his automatic writings that gave interpretations 
of some aspects of Etteilla and was in particular 
interested in a new rendering of his Book of 
Thotn.f 

In the meantime Carrier was glancing through 
the imperfect MS. that I had brought with me. 

''This is rather different from most of the 
books of the period," said he. "It is more like 
a note-book of lectures or a precis of an existing 
magical ritual as performed by a small child. 
What do you make of it?" 

"That is just how it struck me," I told him. 
"It is about the period of the end of the seven- 
teenth and beginning of the eighteenth century. 
The writer might have been one of the adepts 
trained by Francis Barret, by Cagliostro, or by 
Dom Grerle, but it might even be as late as 
Madame Lenormand." 



* Baron de Guldenstubbg. La Realite des Esprits et le 
Phe'nomene Merveilleux de leur Ecriture Directe. 1857 

f Les Sept Nuances de VCEuvre Philosophique Herme'tique. 
Legcms Theoriques et Pratique du Livre de Thotn. 17S6. 



THE AUTOMATIST 29 

"Hardly 1815, I think," said Carrier, "but 
no matter. The interesting thing is that this 
writer seems to have shorn his ritual of lots of 
the inessential matters. For instance, in this 
matter of the invocation of simple elements he 
has resolutely reduced his formula to mere es- 
sentials. Two kinds of the wearisome Hebrew 
prayers are gone and the actual mechanical ad- 
juncts to the invocation are simplified. 

"His consecrations too are limited simply to 
the repetition of words of power. This man 
had in his way reduced his art magic to what 
one may term working formulae. " 

"Sometime I will experiment with them," I 
told him, "but for the present let us see if we 
can recover the ritual on the missing pages." 

Carrier soon passed under control. His mouth 
seemed to fall slack and open in rather ghastly 
fashion and the eyeballs turned up under the 
lids so that though he wrote with half-opened 
eyes only the blue-tinted white of the eyeballs 
could be seen under his heavy lids. His hand 
and forearm began to twitch spasmodically, but 
the pencil stayed almost immobile on the paper 
forming a little knot of scratches, but no letters. 



30 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

Finally I saw that lie had completely entered the 
trance state and was directly under control. 

"Who is the author of these manuscripts V f 
I asked. 

Without a pause the pencil wrote rapidly in a 
sharp angular script: " Marcel Theot, Adept and 
Minor Master of the Arcana." 

" Under whom did you study?" 

" Under the divine Giuseppe Balsamo Count 
Cagliostro, the Grand Copt of the Universe, and 
later under Doctor Jules Lemercier pupil of 
Lavater and Cagliostro." 

"Will you reveal to us the missing pages of 
your manuscript?" The answer was unex- 
pected. 

"To you two," the pencil wrote, "I can re- 
veal these secrets, for you too are initiate and 
know what progress is permitted to the children 
of men. This I say unto you. In the third de- 
cade of this century shall there be a revival of 
art magic, but much that has been sealed to the 
philosophers shall be known to the healers of 
men." * 



* This would seem to point to the present research in 
psychology and psychotherapeutics and its applications to cases 
of " shell shock " and kindred mental disturbances. 



THE AUTOMATIST 31 

The control revealed a complete and up-to- 
date knowledge of movements in the world of 
psychic research and the refrain of the com- 
munications was ever the same. ' ' These things 
were known before, but mankind had not the 
sense to apply the doctrines and practice.' ' 

At length the control took up the actual com- 
munication of the missing portion of the ritual 
and Carrier's automatic script changed entirely 
from his own angular, large-lettered, trim, and 
straggly lettering to the staid precise well- 
formed handwriting of the original manu- 
script. 

All went well until it came to the names of 
God, which had to be written in Hebrew char- 
acters in the corners of the triangle within the 
pentagon of the president of the air. Carrier's 
hand struggled with the attempt to produce the 
letters, but the characters would not form. 
There was a moment of indecision, and then I 
saw hovering over the table a small lambent 
sphere of bluish light. 

The room, remember, was lighted by a gas jet 
and we were not in darkness, but clear and dis- 
tinct the flickering globe of blue light formed 



32 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

over the table, then descended to wrap round 
Carrier's hand and pencil. 

With it there seemed to come an impression 
of intense cold, then there formed within the 
light a plainly visible hand bearing a curiously 
wrought talismanic ring. This hand took the 
pencil and wrote the names in Hebrew char- 
acters Vevahliah, Aniel, and Mumiah, then 
withdrew again. 

While the rest of the ritual was being written 
the globe of light into which the hand had re- 
dissolved hovered over the table, but at the 
end of the script when Carrier's hand fell 
idle it returned and materializing again wrote 
in bold script in ordinary Latin char- 
acters : 

"The dead ye will summon, but Nahemah will 
answer, for I too am a creature of the fire and 
it is only on the underplanes that I com- 
mand. ' ' 

Once again the globe of fire redissolved the 
hand, then the whole ascending toward the ceil- 
ing appeared to expand, dissipate and vanish 
away. Carrier came round and I boiled him 
up a glass of hot water, which, with a liberal 



THE AUTOMATIST 33 

dash of wine, soon restored him to himself. 

Together we went over the script while I told 
him of the curious phenomenon that I had 
witnessed. 

"That may account for the way my hand is 
aching/ ' he said. "I thought it was more than 
usual,' ' and spreading his hand out in front of 
him we both noticed for the first time that both 
the first joint of the thumb and the nail and first 
joint of the forefinger were actually swollen and 
bruised. 

"This Marcel Theot seems to be a terrible 
fellow,' ' said he ruefully. 

"It is the last part of the message that he 
has attached to the ritual that puzzles me," I 
said. "Assuming that he is actually a bad 
spirit, he yet seems to be able to repeat the con- 
struction of a protective circle of exorcism in 
which the names of God are frequently repeated 
and which is in itself supposed to be demon- 
proof and then warns us that Nahemah will 
answer. Nahemah is the spirit queen who pre- 
sides over the female devils of obsession — the 
Succubi. Thus Carrier, my friend, I do not quite 
see what to expect." 



34 A MODEEN OCCULTIST 

"The Succubi," said Carrier, "are known to 
be able to assume the forms of the most desir- 
able of women. This Marcel Theot studied 
thaumaturgy and magic under Cagliostro and 
his followers, and you know to what amazing 
practices the Grand Copt set his female devotees. 
It is probable that the invocation in its pe- 
culiarly condensed style opens the doors to dan- 
gers that are not present when the full ritual is 
applied. You notice that he styles himself minor 
master." 

I agreed, and later analysis of the ritual as 
compared to others showed that in the process 
of condensation many of the safeguarding cere- 
monies and propitiatory invocations had been 
discarded. 

My own opinion is that Marcel Theot was one 
of that numerous class of people who under- 
took the study of magic only in order to 
obtain the supernatural qualification of carnal 
desires. In any case I have deemed his ritual 
unsafe for experiment and have taken steps 
so that it can never fall into unsuitable 
hands. 

The actual materialism of a spirit hand to aid 



THE AUTOMATIST 35 

automatic writing is such an unusual occurrence 
that to my mind it completely disposes of any 
theory of other than spirit knowledge being ap- 
plied in this particular case. 



CHAPTER in 

ASTRAL LIGHT AND THE PSYCHO-LASTBOMETER 

One of the commonest phenomena associated 
with Spiritualism is the production of light. 
Many mediums possess this power of attracting 
or emitting light and even small circles where 
there is in truth little enough Light in the true 
psychic sense, yet produce this, the most elemen- 
tary of the phenomena. 

It is possibly because it is so easy to induce 
light phenomena of various kinds that the pro- 
duction of any form of spirit luminosity has 
been, so to speak, taken at face value as a cri- 
terion of goodness. 

In actual point of fact at least two-thirds of 
the light manifestations seen at Seances may be 
classed as dubious and a portion of them are 
more than dubious, they are malevolent mani- 
festations. 

To this blind belief in the ' ' goodness ' ' of spirit 
light in itself we may trace certain disastrous 

36 



ASTRAL LIGHT 37 

mental calamities that have overtaken too trust- 
ful searchers. The myth springs possibly from 
an acceptance of early Bible teachings and a 
desire to identify these manifestations with the 
Pentecostal tongues of fire and similar anal- 
ogies. But among the mass of humble prac- 
titioners of Spiritualism who follow the path 
of the Light are many that are mistaking astral 
evils for psychic good. 

To the average Spiritualist the success of a 
small circle in the production of spirit lights 
is a heartening message from the spirit world. 
It is a testimony that life-after-death en- 
dures, and as such the phenomena are wel- 
comed as spirit visitors, sometimes identified 
as actual spirit forms, and no doubt is raised 
in the minds of those present concerning 
the innate and essential "goodness" of the 
visitation. 

In order to avoid confusion I shall use the 
term astral light to describe the usual spirit 
light. 

The light phenomena are customarily asso- 
ciated with the dark or semi-dark seance be- 
cause in the full light of day or under normal 



38 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

conditions of artificial light it is almost impos- 
sible to see the astral light at all, unless one is 
clairvoyant or unless the concentration of spirit 
force is so marked that there is no possibility 
of mistaking it. 

The normal appearance of astral light is that 
of indefinite globular or pear-shaped masses of 
faint phosphorescence. These appear near sit- 
ters or on objects in the room and frequently 
move about, wax and wane, or gather into clouds 
before a materialism or in support of a particu- 
lar effort.* 

In other cases they take the form of direct 
rays and in certain individuals have been known 
to occur as flashes like dull electric discharges. 
Another not uncommon form is the projection 
from the body of a distinctly defined aura or 
radiation of light which is faintly luminous like 
the gases in a Geissler tube subjected to oscil- 
lant discharges. 

We must go far back into history and indeed 
beyond the bounds of history before we can come 
to a time when this manifestation of light was 

* Notes of an Enquiry into the Phenomena Called Spiritual. 
William Crookes, F.R.S., p. 91; Class VIII: Luminous Ap- 
pearances. 



ASTRAL LIGHT 39 

not one part of the common stock in trade of 
the thaumaturge or wonder worker. 

The manipulation and control of astral light 
phenomena were part of the religious mysteries 
of the magicians of Chaldea who transmitted 
the secret knowledge to the seers of Egypt. We 
find it in the myth of the luminous bull in the 
Greek mysteries and again as an attribute of 
the great healer Apollonius of Tyana. This 
mysterious radiance plays equal parts in the 
records of the lives of the saints and in the 
terrible archives of the trials for sorcery. 

Confusion exists because to the untrained eye 
of mankind all forms of astral light are iden- 
tical. 

The greater proportion of the astral light 
seen by circles is that generated and given off 
by the human mental energy of the circle itself. 
The spirit-forms are all too often thought-forms 
built up out of the liberated psychoplasm or 
thought-matter given off by sitters. 

The physical nature of this psychoplasm has 
so far defied all attempts at scientific research, 
but it appears to be something more substantial 
than the mere emission of vibrations that it is 



40 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

commonly held to be. It appears to be an all- 
penetrating imponderable emanation which dis- 
sipates rapidly, but which under certain condi- 
tions is capable of being energized by the 
intelligence of the living or by discarnate intel- 
ligence. Under these conditions it becomes lu- 
minous and under certain further conditions can 
be used as the vehicle for the transmission of 
force. 

It can best be realized as being to the mind 
what ectoplasm # is to the body of the medium, 
but the precise limitations of both the astral 
body-matter-ectoplasm, and astral mind-matter 
psychoplasm are not yet ascertained. 

It is a conceivable hypothesis that both are 
functions of the vast unknown mechanism of the 
subconscious self, but where the capacity for the 
projection of ectoplasm is rare, the emission of 
psychoplasm is the basis of most Spiritualist 
phenomena. 

It is to this radiation of psychoplasm that 
we must look for the explanation of such a 
simple thing — and at the same time such a com- 



* For details concerning ectoplasm see Ghosts in Solid Form, 
Gambier Bolton, etc. 



ASTEAL LIGHT 41 

plex thing — as psychic atmosphere. Do we not 
all know the peculiar atmosphere which sur^ 
rounds individuals and places % The phenomena 
associated with apparitions have been ascribed 
to the penetration of structure by violently 
liberated psychoplasm set free in moments of 
passion and bloody violence. There too is the 
clue to its physical source, for in some obscure 
way blood and the emanations from blood play 
a vital and important part in psychic matters. 

Under normal circumstances psychoplasm is 
dissipated and the liberated energy that ani- 
mated it goes with it to return in the normal 
way of the cycle of life. Under other circum- 
stances the psychoplasm retreats back into the 
mind whence it came, just as the materialized 
ectoplasm is reabsorbed into the body of the 
medium. 

The dangers latent in assuming all astral light 
phenomena to be "good" can be realized when 
it is considered what may occur to the projected 
psychoplasm which is emotionally liberated be- 
yond the confines of the body and beyond its 
living human control. 

A party of some half-dozen form a circle in 



42 A MODEEN OCCULTIST 

some provincial city. They may know one an- 
other well or they may be, comparatively speak- 
ing, strangers. However well they may know 
the public lives of the members of the circle, can 
they fathom the secret soul of each sitter! Can 
they say whose mind is a garden of purity or 
who may have some tendency to some unknown 
enormity ! 

Yet it is precisely this weakness that makes 
a soul-appalling danger of the hideous mental 
promiscuity that is one of the essential things 
of which all the more ingenuous and simple be- 
lievers and a few clever evil hypocrites among 
Spiritualists make a cult. 

They may unknowingly include among them- 
selves an individual, man or woman, who has 
somewhere a secret kink — a mental leaning — it 
need not be an actually accomplished physical 
fact — but simply an inclination to the obscene, 
the evil, or the cruel. 

The circle launches its prayer, concentrates 
on the attraction of the discarnate spirits of 
those who have passed over — and what comes, 
who comes? 

There is no gifted Spiritualist or student of 



ASTRAL LIGHT 43 

matters psychic who has not had either personal 
or absolutely credible second-hand experience of 
the existence of bad or lying spirits. It is true 
that insistence upon their existence has latterly 
become unfashionable in Spiritualist circles — 
because it does harm to the professional medium, 
but not even the most insistent of suppressive 
propaganda can live down the writings and tes- 
timonies of the past and the ever-recurrent un- 
deniable phenomena of the present. 

It is not too much to say that in nine cases 
out of ten where a crude and humble belief in 
Spiritualism is put in practice by a circle of 
operators whose standard of education and in- 
tellectual attainment is low, the etherealization 
of the psychoplasm of the believers is mistaken 
for the materialization of the spirit.* 

So much for the visible luminous appearances 
of astral light. Now let us consider the range 
of probabilities that may affect these. It must 
be borne in mind that it is the process of their 
reabsorption into the sitters after being charged 

* Something of this view may be found in the chapter on 
" Pseudo Spirit Phenomena " in Borderland of Psychical Re- 
search, H. J. Hyslop. A book deserving of attention by aU 
interested in Spiritualism. 



44 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

with outside influences that introduces the ele- 
ment of danger. 

Psychologists know that certain fixed laws 
govern mental processes. There is the Law of 
Similarity, which evokes the association of 
ideas; there is the Law of Integration, which 
splits memories and picture memories into in- 
tegral fragments ; and there is the Law of Red- 
integration, which enables the subconscious mind 
to reassemble the part memories into one com- 
pleted picture of a past scene or event. 

The astral light, once beyond the control of 
the sitter, is at the command of (1) stronger 
human wills in the circle, (2) the lower or baser 
forms of discarnate intelligence, (3) spirits of 
ex-mortals, (4) higher spirits. 

It is the dominance of the human will that is 
the first positive danger. Part of the accepted 
dogma of Spiritualism is that hostile or un- 
believing influences are antagonistic to the 
spirits. This is by no means accurate, but can 
be classed for practical purposes as a half-truth. 
The state of mental concentration and muscular 
relaxation that is necessary to the seance bears 
a close and analogous resemblance to the state 



ASTRAL LIGHT 45 

of consent that the hypnotist demands of his 
subject. 

The first requisite of the Spiritualist is the 
question put to him or her by others of the cult. 

"Do you believe in Spiritualism?" 

The honest sceptic, the unreasoning man-in- 
the-street observer is soon converted by evi- 
dence, then faith in the inexplicable wonders 
of Spiritualism is born. 

In other words the mind of the neophyte ac- 
cepts the whole loose doctrine of Spiritualism 
and is prepared to believe that all phenomena 
are due to spirit influence, and does not attempt 
to further analyse the accepted spirit influence. 

The mental or emotional state produced by 
the participation of a devout believer in a 
seance, leaves the mind receptive of ideas, and 
the ideas received back into the mind are those 
impressed upon the psychoplasm that is libe- 
rated and is visible as astral light and is re- 
absorbed into its sources after it has been 
beyond the control of its originator's conscious- 
ness. 

In a circle of ten or fewer people where the 
sexes are mixed, it is impossible to say what 



46 A MODEKN OCCULTIST 

suppressed desires may be latent in the minds 
of those who compose it. Even in the case of 
circles confined to one sex alone there is the 
possibility of sex perversion being a secretly 
dominant mental force in the mind of someone 
there. 

It is an inexorable law that the conscious or 
subconscious will of the most powerful and de- 
termined member of the circle dominates the 
minds of the others through its influence on the 
psychoplasm or astral light. 

Even without the knowledge of the dominant 
influence his or her will or thought-force emis- 
sion will gain mastery over those of the others, 
and if there is any violent sex disturbance at 
the bottom of the dominant will, this will be 
communicated to the others or to the selected 
other furthering the desire. 

The next stage occurs where passion or desire 
on the part of one member of the circle for 
another is absent. Despite repeated statements 
that the desire of the members of the circle is to 
meet pure spirits, there may be members whose 
secret wishes are not those of the pathway of 
light. Love for those who have passed over 



ASTRAL LIGHT 47 

may be still carnal love in the hearts of those 
who remain. Abelard may have passed beyond 
passion into the realm of death, but Heloise may 
refuse his plea of impossibility and still pursue 
in the spirit that which escaped her in the flesh. 

Carnality is not confined to this plane nor does 
it cease upon the next, but the endeavour of 
mortals to get in touch with the spirit world 
while there is latent in them either known or 
suppressed, and unrecognized desire is fatal. 

Every sexual desire the mind has experienced 
is indexed or pigeon-holed in the recesses of the 
subliminal mind. People whose conscious mind 
is free of any vestige of such desire may go to a 
seance and under the influence of the emotional 
forces of a seance liberate all the repressed 
energy of their past ungratified sexual desires— 
without knowing it. 

These forces attract low-grade spirits some of 
whom have never been human and the lowest 
and most vicious of spirits whose human lives 
have been a cycle of debauchery. Like attracts 
like, is one of the laws of Nature. The Law of 
Similarity is one of the rules of psychology. 

The gateways of the soul are thrown open 



48 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

not to whoever may enter in, but with an explicit 
mental invitation to those spirits that derive 
gratification from the lusts and desires of 
mortals. 

The whole body of the psychoplasm of a circle 
is at the mercy of the mind of the individual to 
whose call the spirits come. 

The practical results of these open-house in- 
vitations to the spirits are devastating. The 
ideas of gratification become rooted not in the 
conscious mind but in the subconscious mind, 
where they work slowly but inevitably to the 
subversion of conscious "good." 

The first step toward possession and obsession 
are often the result of seances, where Truth has 
been sought with the tongue and Evil within 
the heart of one present. It is not the guilty 
alone who suffer, but the weak and innocent who 
sit beside them. 

There are no bounds to the malignancy of 
the impure spirits. They are sly and notable 
liars — they can assume the form of mortals who 
have passed over and they can assume personal- 
ity and knowledge that was known to the dead. 
By degrees they inculcate evil, predisposing the 



ASTRAL LIGHT 49 

victim to accept and yield to evil in particular 
forms. Frequently they proceed by slow stages, 
advising and inspiring savage asceticism, but 
seizing each stage of natural reaction from this 
unnatural regime to further subvert their victim 
in wantonness. 

The obvious need is for some method of dis- 
tinguishing between good and bad projections 
of astral light. 

To the human eye alone there is no means of 
distinguishing between the etherealizations of 
the psychoplasm of the believer and the identical 
luminous phenomena which occur when there is 
a materialization of the actual spirit. It is there 
that psychic science can come to our assistance. 

The fluorescent bodies zinc sulphide, barium 
platino-cyanide, and the preparation known as 
Sidot's hexagonal blonde, are all intensely sus- 
ceptible to radioactivity. The rays of radio- 
active bodies have the peculiar property of being 
able to penetrate the ether, and the mass of 
spirit teaching tells us that this property is 
also common to the disembodied spirits of those 
who have passed to other planes. 

The relative purity or potency of astral lights 



50 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

may be readily ascertained by their effect upon 
a simple instrument that I have named the 
Psycho-Lastrometer. 

This instrument is both cheap and easy to 
make in the simple form in which I first used it. 
The later applications which make it a register- 
ing instrument in addition to being a mere in- 
dicator are necessarily costly, but these are only 
necessary to the expert investigator and are of 
no value to the mere seeker after proof or those 
who seek communion with the spirits of the dead 
for the purposes of solace, quasi-religious con- 
viction, or vulgar curiosity. 

To make a crude psycho-lastrometer all that 
is necessary is a wide-mouthed glass jar whose 
walls should not be more than two millimetres 
thick. The height of the jar should be some 
eight inches, the width in proportion three and 
a quarter inches. 

I have found that an ordinary lipped beaker 
of Bohemian glass such as is readily obtainable 
from any maker of laboratory apparatus is ad- 
mirably suited to the purpose. 

The neck of this jar must be fitted with a large 
cork or wooden bung the whole of which is 



ASTEAL LIGHT 51 

covered with tinfoil. The centre of this cork 
shonld be pierced by a piece of brass wire five 
inches long, bent at one end to form a hook. 
This end is inside the jar and from the hook 
hangs the plate of the lastrometer. To the 
projecting end of the brass wire outside the jar 
should be soldered a circular collecting disc of 
brightly polished brass or tinplate three inches 
in diameter. This should stand up vertically 
to the axis of the wire, being thus on edge in- 
stead of forming a flat table. 

The plate of the lastrometer consists of a 
rectangle of thin aluminum two and half inches 
wide by four inches deep. Half an inch from 
the top edge three slits should be cut in the 
metal so that a portion of a magnetized knit- 
ting needle three inches long may be threaded 
through the breadth of the plate, projecting half 
an inch on each side. 

This needle forms a cross bar at the top of the 
plate and should be accurately adjusted so that 
the broad surface of the plate is always in the 
same plane as the axis of the needle. 

To the projecting ends of the needle is secured 
a loop of copper wire four inches long whose 



52 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

other end is made fast to the other end of the 
needle and whose centre passes over the hooked 
end of the wire through the cork. The plate 
thus swings like a miniature signboard sus- 
pended from the hook. 

The surface of one side of the plate is now 
painted with several successive layers of a 
saturated solution of gum arabic in one ounce 
of water to which has been added one and a half 
drachms of luminous zinc sulphide or Sidot's 
preparation (preferably the latter) and one 
liquid drachm of a ten per cent, solution of 
barium platino-cyanide. The other side of the 
plate should be painted with "optical black" or 
any other suitable dead black varnish. 

Between the edge of the bung and the central 
wire should be inserted at convenient intervals 
three or four sections of glass tubing whose in- 
ternal bore exceeds half an inch. These serve to 
admit external influences to the interior of the 
lastrometer. 

When complete it will be found that the plate 
of the lastrometer is highly fluorescent and can 
be energized into greater activity by exposure 
to sun or artificial light. It is desirable that 



ASTKAL LIGHT 53 

the plate should be kept in a state of relatively 
low radiancy, as otherwise spirit agency cannot 
raise its luminous powers to a higher degree. 

At a seance the instrument should be placed 
within the circle and the jar rotated till the mag- 
netized needle can oscillate freely in its natural 
position pointing toward the North and South 
Poles. 

Concentrations of genuine spirit force will 
raise the luminosity of the plate to double and 
treble its normal output of light. When the 
force is concentrated in the lastrometer, ques- 
tions can be answered by the spirits by signal- 
ing in Morse or simple code by rotating the 
plate through an angle of 90° against the surface 
force of the magnet.* 



* The psycho-lastrometer was further perfected. The element 
selenium is inordinately sensitive to all forms of light rays 
and according to the light thrown upon it permits more or 
less electric current to pass. I arranged the apparatus so 
that the light thrown out by the psycho-lastrometer impinged 
upon a selenium cell whose resistance varied from 50,000 ohms 
to 100,000 ohms, which was in its turn connected to a cell 
and to a Deprex d'Arsonval mirror galvanometer. This enables 
accurate readings of the actual waxings and wanings of the 
light value of the lastrometer plate to be taken, and entirely 
eliminates any possibility of visual illusion seeming to make 
the plate more luminous than before. A series of plotted 
curves based on time abscissae and light co-ordinates will give 
an accurate scientific record of any differences in the radiant 
value of the plate that occur during the seance. 



54 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

It may be urged that this apparatus is not 
fraud-proof and that it would respond to cer- 
tain agencies such as the concealment of an 
electromagnet in the room. To this it may be 
answered that an ordinary pocket compass 
placed on the table by the lastrometer would 
also respond to these forces and the fraud would 
be transparent to any observer. 

So far as I can tell, no human mental effort 
conscious or subconscious can affect this simple 
instrument. It is necessary to guard against 
illusion by imagining that the lastrometer is 
gaining radiance, and to this end it is advisable 
to prepare a stand and test-piece made of alum- 
inum and coated with precisely the same solu- 
tion as is applied to the plate. These should 
always be kept together and allowed to become 
equally radiant. If this is placed on the table 
near the lastrometer, any variations in the lat- 
ter can be rapidly verified by comparison with 
the non-insulated and non-oriented test-piece. 

Antipathy on the part of the presiding 
medium to the use of the psycho-lastrometer is 
invariably a bad sign. Spirit messages object- 
ing to it are the most valid reasons for its re- 



ASTRAL LIGHT 55 

tention, and such communications should be 
viewed with the deepest suspicion. The cost of 
the apparatus is a few shillings, it can be made 
by anybody in an hour or so of spare time, and 
in actual point of fact there is nothing about it 
that is offensive to the spirits of "good" or to 
the pure. 

To those who are learned in symbolism I may 
suggest that the receiving disc at the top of the 
wire need not be in the form of a disc, but can 
be cut or pierced with ornament such as sacred 
symbols or with any decorative design. 

It is desirable, however, that the light surface 
be retained and that the available metallic sur- 
face of the disc should not be diminished more 
than is necessary. 



CHAPTER IV 

AN EXPERIMENT ON THE THEORY OF PROTECTIVE 

VIBRATION 

Ghost phenomena do not come into the province 
of practising Spiritualism. The average Spirit- 
ualist is content to follow the Catholic doctrine 
of offering up a few devout prayers for the rest 
of the uneasy spirit should circumstances throw 
him into contact with it. Apparitions as a whole 
affect the Spiritualist with as much unreasoning 
terror as falls to the lot of the non-Spiritualist 
mortal. 

The chance-met apparition of the dead is after 
all a fairly common phenomenon. The theory 
of the veridic apparition of the recently dead is 
explainable by various hypotheses, but there is 
little reason to suppose that the human spirit 
still animates the astral body that appears. 

The luminous quality or phosphorescence of 
astral light that enwraps the astral body of the 
apparition is not necessarily a proof of the sur- 

56 



PEOTECTIVE VIBEATION 57 

vival of the identity of the soul whose astral 
body appears. The phosphorescent radiance as- 
sociated with certain kinds of fish survives the 
death of the organism, and luminous bodies or 
glands extracted from these creatures may be 
preserved for months after death and still re- 
tain elements of luminosity. 

The thinking Spiritualist does not disregard 
the lessons and analogies of science. The great 
names in the history of Spiritualism have been 
those of scientists like Lodge and Crookes,* and 
it has ever been their desire to translate the ap- 
parent miracles of the supernatural into no less 
miraculous but more deeply understood paral- 
lels with the natural. 

The great slogan of Spiritualism is that it is 
a perfectly natural understandable thing; thus 
is it the duty of every Spiritualist to reduce 
those things which non-Spiritualistic thought 
deems supernatural to the realms of the under- 
stood, the explained and the known, — in a word,, 
to the state of the natural. 



* Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is perhaps to-day an even greater 
name. But he is not a scientist and is greater as a publicist 
than as a healer despite his medical degree. But then too — 
all the Apostles were not of one trade. 



58 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

It is no good to tell a materialistic world that 
owing to the intervention of spirit force mechan- 
ical results contrary to all natural laws were 
obtained. The sceptic, and above all the logical 
sceptics — who is the easiest of all to convert, can 
you but once bring him to see the fallacies that 
underlie his logic — demands proof, proof not in 
terms of second-hand evidence, but proof in 
terms of cold matter-of-fact science. 

The missionary effort of Spiritualism must be 
made a crusade not into the minds of the un- 
intelligent but straight into the citadels of 
reason of the men of science. It is necessary 
first of all to demonstrate the spirit forces and 
then to prove that they are forces of the spirit 
and not natural, so far as the meaning of the 
term "natural" may be held to imply limitation 
to the physical laws governing this mortal 
earth. 

The spirit realm is the realm of the ether, the 
boundless range of unknown interstellar space. 
Blindly, gropingly, the men of science are put- 
ting out feelers — theories — pragmatical assump- 
tions that serve them as laws. Little by liftla 
it is being recognized that the physics of the 



PROTECTIVE VIBRATION 59 

ether is the underlying superscientific structure 
of modern Spiritualism. Little by little their 
discoveries fall into harmony with our claims, 
and we must look upon science as the hand- 
maiden rather than the antagonist of our truth. 

The theories of apparition that are held vary 
according to the classification of the apparition. 
There are numerous instances of apparitions of 
the living * and there is an infinite mass of data 
concerning veridical apparitions of the dead. A 
statistical analysis of 17,000 cases collected by 
Society for Psychical Research resulted in the 
finding by the Committee that i i Between deaths 
and apparitions of the dying person a connexion 
exists which is not due to chance alone. ' ' f 

A clear distinction must, however, be drawn 
between apparitions which may appear to rela- 
tives, friends, and acquaintances, and then dis- 
appear for ever, and those definite and persist- 
ently recurring apparitions that go by the name 
of haunts. 

The terminology of matters psychic is loose 
and inexact, but it is well to have a clear mental 



* Proceedings 8.P.R. 
t Hid., Vol. X, p. 394. 



60 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

distinction between the occasional " apparition* ' 
and the periodic or repeating " ghost/* 

For purposes of scientific investigation the 
casual apparition is almost valueless, but the es- 
tablished ghost is the nearest approximation 
that we can get to a serious test standard for 
experimental purposes. 

There are in England at least half a dozen 
ghosts whose periodical manifestations are reg- 
ular enough to serve as test instances. The 
genuine ghost is so rare that from the point 
of view of psychical research it is vitally im- 
portant that the haunt should not be harried by 
every party of sensation- avid amateurs who 
think they would "like to see a ghost.' ' The 
amateur exorcists, the psychically gifted ladies, 
and all the ragtag and bobtail of well-meaning 
idiots that disturb a haunt once it becomes 
known, can only be compared to a set of egg- 
stealing, bird-scaring boys who invade a wood- 
land sanctuary and destroy the fruition of the 
work of a painstaking observer of nature who 
has been recording the life of the rare birds. 

In parenthesis it may be remarked that if 
the ghost is a full-blooded manifestation it will 



PROTECTIVE VIBRATION 61 

take more than the well-meaning effort of some 
anaemic amateur psychic to lay it. The very 
last person who should go near a violent ghost 
is anyone whose capacity for mediumship is in 
any way developed. Mediums should only be 
present when adequate and experienced mortal 
controls are there also. 

In the West of England there is an excellent 
example of a genuinely haunted house that has 
so far resisted all attempts to solve the origin 
of the haunt, the precise nature of the super- 
natural intelligence that directs the manifesta- 
tion, or the motive of the phenomena.* 

It is now extremely difficult to get permission 
to carry out investigations, as adequate pre- 
cautions have been taken to safeguard both the 
phenomena and the incautious dabbler in mat- 
ters beyond the veil. 

I may take occasion here to warn my readers 
against the legal risks attached to stating that 
a house is haunted. In the eyes of the law such 

* This particular ghost has been exorcised without effect. 
The house has been visited by psychic experts of considerable 
eminence, including H. Barson and others. The results of all 
these investigations were uniformly disastrous and disagree- 
able, and there is reason to believe that in some cases the health 
and mentality of less experienced investigators were adversely 
affected. 



62 A MODEKN OCCULTIST 

a statement is actionable, as it tends to de- 
preciate the market value of the property. It is 
for this reason that stories concerning haunted 
houses when printed in newspapers have to 
be obscured in their indication of the precise 
locality and silent with regard to the name, 
number, or address of the suspected dwelling. 
The verbal repetition of such statements is also 
actionable and such cases as the bogus haunting 
of a house by the tenants or by caretakers in 
order to avoid payment of rent or the letting of 
the house are manifest reasons why the matter 
of haunted houses should always be treated with 
the utmost discretion. 

Particulars concerning a reputed haunt can, 
however, be communicated to a newspaper with 
safety. All communications to a journal are 
privileged, and they can be trusted not to print 
anything which renders them party to an action 
for damages. 

In 1913 a well-known student of occult mat- 
ters announced his theory of Protective Vibra- 
tions* It was in effect an analysis of the actual 

* Capt. Hugh Pollard was the author of this theory. His 
monograph was never printed, but typescripts of his sensa- 
tional lecture before the members of the now defunct Odic Club 



PROTECTIVE VIBRATION 63 

physical methods reported to be employed by 
spirit forces in building up their visible and 
material forms. His theory contained several 
assumptions which it is impossible to disregard 
and which certainly do not admit of rejection. 

Taken in series he stated that t ' The presence 
of human beings was an essential to the appear- 
ance of the ghost." This admits of no disproof, 
as unless human witnesses are present there can 
be no testimony to the presence of the manifes- 
tation. A general consensus of opinion dis- 
credits ghost photographs unless taken under 
the strictest test conditions which again implies 
the presence of the human element. 

"The energy or thought-matter' ' (i.e. psycho- 
plasm) "extended by the mortals is the matter 
out of which the astral form is constructed. 
They are, so to speak, the prime motors or the 
energy and material, providing units out of 
which the discarnate intelligence builds its car- 
nate habit. ' ' 

This conception embraces psychoplasm and 

were circulated to certain interested parties. He tells me 
that he had previously spent an interesting night at a haunted 
house. He was in the company of Mr. Eliott O'Donell and 
obtained a puzzling and unsatisfactory flashlight photograph 
of the manifestation that occurred on that occasion. 



64 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

ectoplasm as one, but the researches of 
Schrenck-Notzing were not then known. These 
and other similar experiments all point to the 
essential probability that the broad sense of his 
reasoning is correct. 

From this point onward he traces the develop- 
ment of the material astral body as a process of 
the conversion of the original vibrations into 
low forms of actual energy which are able to 
manipulate the atoms of matter and under the 
directing will of the intelligence or entity build 
up the materialization. 

He makes one notable reservation, asserting 
that " there is no evidence to prove that dis- 
carnate intelligence is the directing force. Pure 
auto-suggestion, due to concentrated belief and 
anticipation that a specified ghost will appear, 
may achieve the same result." 

But the purpose of his paper was not to argue 
concerning the reality of spirits, but to put for- 
ward an ingenious scientific theory concerning 
their mechanism. The sum-total of his theory 
is that the physical structure of the hallucina- 
tion-spirit or ghost-form in its early stages of 
concentration is destructible by many forms of 



PROTECTIVE VIBRATION 65 

etheric vibration of greater force or different 
wave-length. 

Ghosts and spirits are integrally bound up 
with the conditions of darkness and dusk. The 
rays of solar light are admittedly inimical to all 
these manifestations. In other words, ma- 
terialization cannot be performed under certain 
conditions of light which means certain con- 
ditions of vibration. The light rays which are 
visible to the human eye represent about one- 
tenth of the complete range of light rays known 
to exist from ultra-violet to infra-red.* At 
other points in the scale of ether waves come 
the vibrations associated with sound, with elec- 
tricity and magnetic phenomena and with radio- 
activity. 

The complexity of these wave-lengths of vi- 
bration is enormous, for within the range of 
light-rays there are rays of another kind of 
light, so that the sum-total of two kinds of light 
is, paradoxically enough, darkness.f 

* A complete scale of all known ether waves, including the 
visible spectrum, has been drawn by Professor Lebedeff and 
is given on page 383 of the English edition of Kolbe's 
Electricity. 

f This is a little-known fact, but nevertheless a common- 
place of physics demonstrable in any lecture room. 



66 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

Passing, logically enough, from stage to stage 
the " Theory of Protective Vibrations" points 
out that assuming the existence of ghosts or 
malevolent spirits, these cannot take material 
shape when opposed by hostile vibrations. Cer- 
tain kinds of light, sound (such as the sonorous 
vibrations of church bells or gongs of special 
note), and high-frequency electric currents all 
destroy the initial stages of manifestation by 
purely mechanical means. Lastly he postulates 
that "in the presence of a radium salt (of speci- 
fied intensity) ... a ghost cannot manifest." 

Protection or exorcism by radium salts is un- 
deniably a twentieth-century possibility, for the 
terrific and incessant discharge of ether waves 
consequent upon the disintegration of the 
radium atoms is so powerful that even such a 
known and powerful force as electric energy is 
completely destroyed by it. 

In the presence of a radium salt non-conduc- 
tors of electricity become conductors. Differ- 
ences of potential cease to exist and electro- 
scopes and Leyden jars fail to retain their 
charges. 

Under these conditions, then, it was hardly 



PEOTECTIVE VIBRATION 67 

conceivable that a manifestation which depends, 
in its initial stages, upon the most delicate of 
vibrations — the unknown vibrations of the 
psychoplasm could take place. 

Truth is dependent upon experiment, upon 
patient repetition and trial and error. In order 
to test the theory in actual practice, I deter- 
mined to pay a visit to the well-known and 

malignant ghost at X * and actually put to 

the test whether or not a ghost can manifest in 
the presence of a radium salt. 

The rays of radioactive salts are unable to 
pass through lead, and pure radium bromide, 
which is the nearest that we have got to the 
isolation of the element radium, always has to 
be kept in a leaden box or cell, as otherwise its 
rays would pass through and destroy the skin 
and flesh of the man carrying it. Before the 
properties of radium were known, this destruc- 
tive faculty of radium vibrations caused several 
mishaps, for unwary men of science carried 
these dangerous salts loose in glass vials in their 
pockets. 



* The actual locality of X will be clear to many in- 
vestigators. 



68 A MODEEN OCCULTIST 

For the purposes of experiment I obtained 
the loan of a small supply of a solution of a 
radium salt that gives out powerful emanations. 
This was enclosed in a glass vial which was in 
turn encased in a leaden box. 

The haunted house is a peculiar old building 
of no particular architectural beauty. It stands 
remote and deserted in its own overgrown ex- 
tended grounds, and over it breathes a generally 
depressing atmosphere of damp, neglect, oppres- 
sion, and decay. 

Viewed from the outside the house presents 
no outstanding features that attract the eye. 
The lower windows are heavily barred by rusted 
iron rails without and closed wooden shutters 
within. Even creepers seem to have felt the 
blight that lies upon the mansion, for no patch 
of green or rambling ivy tendril covers the bare 
surface of the brick. 

Three storeys high, mansard-roofed and tur- 
reted with a dozen contorted Tudor chimney- 
stacks, the roof-line stands out against the sky 
and the dull leaf masses of the surrounding 
trees. The higher windows are also shuttered, 
but not even the small boys of the neighbouring 



PROTECTIVE VIBRATION 69 

village have dared to break the grimy window 
frames that lie over the shutters. Desolate and 
forbidding, the mansion and its grounds lie 
derelict, shunned by all men. 

My key is that of the small back door, and 
it is used but once or twice a year when the 
needs of the psychic call upon us to tread a 
path of peril and hazard. 

Inside one steps into the cold stone-flagged 
passages that lead to the empty kitchens and 
offices. The air is heavy and dank with that 
queer smell of earth that one associates with 
crypts and graves rather than with the clean 
new-turned furrow. The whole house is bare of 
furniture, the paint of the woodwork dull and 
dirty. Spots of amorphous fungus cling to the 
walls, and here and there wallpaper has peeled 
off in long leprous strips, exposing the corpse- 
grey plaster behind. 

The door from the servants ' offices opens into 
the wide Georgian hall, from which sweeps up 
a monstrous wooden staircase. Half-way up the 
stair is a landing which marks the limit of ac- 
tivity of the manifestation. In the rooms be- 
yond that and on the landing itself the presence 



70 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

is terribly powerful, but it seems that beyond 
that limit the terror cannot go. 

The actual room where the presence is at its 
strongest is a chamber at the end of the first 
floor. The room walls are outside walls on three 
sides, the remaining partition wall is the one in 
which is the door to the main corridor that runs 
through the house. In the centre of the floor 
is a deep cavity. This has been a priest's hiding 
hole or secret treasure closet, and from signs 
in the woodwork it is manifest that the trapdoor 
was once concealed beneath a big four-poster 
bed. 

The windows are barred with high shutters 
that let in no light. The rays of my electric 
lantern disclose the mats of cobwebs that hang 
from the rusted cross bars, and it is evident that 
no human hand has disturbed the shutters for 
years. A trial shows me that some of the 
bolts are indeed rusted home with age-old 
neglect. 

I unpacked my handbag, in which I carry the 
few simple necessities I need on these occasions, 
and wrapping myself up in my travelling rug 
composed myself to read by the light of my 



PROTECTIVE VIBRATION 71 

travelling candles until the hour of ten was 
reached. 

At ten o'clock I closed my book, put out my 
candle, and composed myself to watch for the 
manifestation, which I knew by inner conscious- 
ness would be forthcoming. 

It was a dark and moonless night and not a 
flicker or ray of external light penetrated the 
dark stretches of the haunted room. No wind 
stirred the trees or moaned in the chimney- 
tops and . the qualities of absolute dark and 
absolute quiet were all that could be de- 
sired. 

Slowly out of the darkness seemed to come 
pinpoints of bluish light — mere specks of phos- 
phorescence scintillant in the still air. The 
specks thickened and multiplied till they floated 
like a maze of dancing midgets ; then too came 
the dark power of oppression, that sense of the 
dread and the uncanny that seems to grip the 
very heart and the base of the skull in a numbing 
grip of fear. 

Cold grew the room, colder and colder — that 
sense of freezing that experienced psychics as- 
sociate with the dread phenomena of malevolent 



72 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

apparitions. It is a coldness of the soul as well 
as of the body, a dull biting cold that suggests 
the limitless freezing eternities of interstellar 
space. 

The blue specks spun their dance and slowly 
became more luminous. They collected in little 
nebulae of light like cigarette ends of intense 
blue radiance. Every particle of the air 
was filled with this luminosity, so that the 
room seemed to be filled with a dull moon- 
light. 

Slowly the nebulae changed from their spin- 
ning movement to a slow weaving motion. 
Strands and floating webs of phosphores- 
cence drifted like smoke wreaths about the 
room. 

The points of light gave place to clouds of 
luminous mist like softly rolling, utterly silent 
globes of dull blue light. Little by little the 
dance of the globes speeded up. They spun and 
whirled and wove in and out among themselves 
till they had drawn into one mass all the lumin- 
ous matter in the room. 

Like a terror-charged cloud this mass hovered 
some eight feet high, a clear two feet off the 



PROTECTIVE VIBRATION 73 

floor; its brilliance waxed and waned and its 
confines drew in. Slowly the cloud was taking 
shape as a pillar and within the pillar one conld 
see the ghastly shaping of the rudimentary 
form. 

Here before my eyes was the actual form of 
the stranger — for this ghost is a malevolent 
strangling demon — on the very point of con- 
centration. 

Carefully I stretched out my hand to the 
leaden box, unscrewed the cylindrical lid, and 
threw into my right hand the precious vial of 
radium salt. 

The energy-charged tube glowed in the dark 
with all the beauty of intense phosphorescence, 
and as I held it at arm's length toward 
the pillar of semi-materialization that repre- 
sented all the evil forces of discarnate Hate — 
the mists of vapour rolled away. As if by 
magic the whole apparition was dissipated, 
and in twenty seconds was as if it had never 
been. 

There is little more to be said. The theory 
had been brilliantly vindicated in practice, but 
it is impossible to generalize from one particular 



74 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

instance. Physicists know the wide range of 
differences that exist between the different 
radium salts,* and there the matter must rest 
until opportunity for further experiments is 
available. 

The analogous protective vibrations that the 
author of the monograph alleges would work 
are all probable, but require considerably more 
apparatus. To my mind the use of radioactive 
salts as talismans with which to exorcise a case 
of malignant haunting is at once a great and 
practical step in the direction of relieving 
humanity of these troublesome psychic intru- 
ders. The discovery and the theory are one of 
the most remarkable contributions to psychic 
science in our time. 

Pitchblende, from which radium is extracted, 
does not appear to have attracted the attention 
of the ancients and there is no trace of its use 
in any process of alchemy or the allied sciences. 
Dr. Dee's magic mirror is reported to have been 
of a black substance and it is possible that it 
may have been of radioactive material, although 

* The solution used was a solution of radium emanations 
which gives out a, r, and y rays together. It is not well 
known which ray affects the dissolution of psychoplasm. 



PROTECTIVE VIBRATION 75 

this quality is not necessary for the purposes for 
which he required it.* 

It is after all only a few years since the theory 
of ether-waves and vibrations was formulated. 
Research into psychic phenomena gives us a 
chain of disconnected phenomena which never- 
theless are obviously connected. The distance 
from telepathy or thought-transference to ex- 
teriorized energy or power-transference is but 
a short one. Science will soon enable us to 
understand the mechanism of phenomena, and 
when we once know the true rules or laws gov- 
erning these phenomena we shall be able to es- 
tablish spirit communication at will. 

* The mirror of Dr. Dee is still in existence, but the material 
the mirror is made of is a surface of polished coal. 



CHAPTER V 

SEX IN THE NEXT WORLD 

There is in existence an enormous mass of 
recorded spirit communication concerning life 
and death. The one outstanding feature con- 
cerning these revelations is that they tell us 
extremely little. Sometimes the reason given 
for this withholding of information is that it 
is forbidden by higher spirits, and it is cer- 
tainly remarkable that despite the great enthus- 
iasm shown for the principles of democracy in 
this world, there have never been any revela- 
tions of a democratic principle on the higher 
plane. 

The rule of the next world appears to be 
that of a benevolent autocracy, working through 
a hierarchy of directing spirits controlling other 
spirits on clearly defined planes. We know 
nothing of the political system of the other 
world except that there is no such thing as any 
form of elective system, no majority rule, and 
little social structure. 

76 



SEX IN THE NEXT WOELD 77 
The great dominant factor of the hereafter as 
described by the bulk of Spiritualistic literature 
appears to be the acceptance of authority. The 
recently arrived spirit is taken in hand by 
" guides" who instruct, and the spirit then 
passes from grade to grade or plane to plane, 
until it achieves an eminence entirely beyond 
the bounds of human thought. 

There is perhaps no limit to the speculation 
that can be indulged in concerning the after- 
life, but there are certain aspects of it that ap- 
pear contradictory. There are good spirits and 
bad spirits, low grades and high grades and 
all intermediate stages. There are also low 
spirits that are said never to have been hu- 
man and high spirits of the same non-mortal 
nature. But badness and goodness exist 
on the spiritual planes as much as on this 
earth. 

The spirits who visit seances retain many of 
their earthly characteristics. They state that 
they are still male and female despite the as- 
sumption on the part of many writers that sex 
does not exist upon the spiritual plane. The 
least possible experience of spirit communica- 



78 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

tion in any form is quite sufficient to expose 
this amazing fallacy. 

If the differentiation of sex has any purpose 
at all, it can only have the same purpose in the 
next world as it has in this. Otherwise sex dis- 
tinction would be cast off just as is the human 
body after death. 

This brings us to the consideration of how 
and why the myth of the sexlessness of spirits 
has passed into acceptance as a fact. 

The Spiritualist is open to human error and 
it is only human to build into our theories those 
things which tend to prove them and to dis- 
regard matters which are not in harmony with 
our ideas. Both in Britain and in America 
there is a certain amount of false modesty that 
amounts to pruriency concerning all matters of 
sex. 

As a result, the very limited moral doctrines 
of sexual relationship as understood by certain 
Christian sects, have been tacitly held to by 
those dominating the after-life. Sex, as under- 
stood in conventional terms, has been seen to be 
such a danger to the construction of a hypo- 
thetical but perfectly moral future state, that 



SEX IN THE NEXT WOELD 79 

the whole sex question has been squashed by a 
statement by Spiritualists that sex does not 
exist in after-life. 

This is entirely wrong, for, as I have pointed 
out above, according to spirit statement sex 
does exist and it is only fair to suppose that 
it is there for the usual reason. 

There exists the further problem of the origin 
of spirits that have never been mortal. These 
must come somehow from somewhere, and there 
is no reason to suppose that the continuation of 
sex upon the astral planes is not for this pur- 
pose. Its existence is indeed an absolute an- 
swer to the theories of parthenogenesis held by 
believers whose minds were clouded with a 
residuum of theological beliefs. 

To sum up, we have evidence of the continu- 
ation of sex — indeed it is a cardinal point, for it 
is impossible to believe in continuation of per- 
sonality after death unless sex continues with 
it. One cannot logically believe in the one with- 
out the other. 

The state of error has arisen through the con- 
fusion of sex with sin. The would-be formula- 
tors of the new Spiritualistic dogmas, having 



80 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

been unable to effect a mental compromise be- 
tween the moral and monogamous Christian and 
the moral and polygamous Mohammedan, at- 
tempted to solve the whole business by a bland 
statement that there was no sex in the other 
world. 

Some writers do indeed recognize this per- 
manence of sex, but gloss it over.* They ignore 
the fact that if a thing exists it exists for a pur- 
pose and the fatal conception that the gratifica- 
tion of a sex desire is a sin persists throughout 
their pages. 

On the other hand, gratification of other vo- 
luptuous sense desires such as aural pleasures 
from music or self-abandonment to any of the 
pleasures of the intellect, appears to be re- 
garded not only as permissible but as praise- 
worthy. In fact, any analysis of the reported 
habits and customs of the next world, plunges us 
into a mass of paradoxical contradictions. 

In point of fact it is impossible to draw a 
hard-and-fast line between the actual spirit 

* " People live in communities as one would expect if like 
attracts like, and the male spirit still finds his true mate 
though there is no sensuality in the grosser sense and no child- 
birth." Sir A. Conan Doyle, Chapter III, The New Revelation. 



SEX IN THE NEXT WORLD 81 

revelation and interpolated ideas by the medium. 
It is also notorious that as soon as any new 
concept of the next world is published in book 
form, the "revelations" from any different 
sources seem to take on an unmistakable tinge 
according to the latest theories. In fact, a liter- 
ary psychoanalysis of reported next worlds 
shows the unmistakable traces of books read in 
the past. 

Certain accounts of the spirit life obtained 
through Mohammedan mediums by French in- 
vestigators in Algiers show what may be called 
a peculiarly active sexual life in the after-world. 
This may possibly be attributed to either early 
religious belief in a sensuous Mohammedan 
paradise or alternatively to the particular type 
of Arab spirits who furnished the description. 
In any case, the accounts could not be published 
for general or even private reading, but there 
is no conceivable reason why they should be 
deemed more unreliable than other spirit com- 
munications. 

Some idea of the theme of these revelations 
can be gathered if I may say that one of the 
communicators, called Sidi Aissa Ben S'dub, 



82 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

prefaces his words by the cryptic statement: 
"Know then, mortals, that here are neither 
camels nor horses — nor virtuous women, — for 
us virtue, as ye know it, exists not. And, as I 
have related, there being neither camels nor 
horses nor virtuous women, what think ye then 
occupies the time of us who were strong men?" 

Oriental imagery is rich in terms concerning 
sex, and the revelation as taken down in Arabic 
is a document of some literary value. Its trans- 
lation into precise French leaves us under no 
misapprehension as to the actual technique of 
sex gratification on the next plane. Their 
methods appear to be our methods, but it is of 
course impossible to arrive at any conception 
of relative degrees of pleasure. It is also cur- 
ious to note that in the Arab revelations given 
there was no reference at all to any ensuing 
spirit birth, but one interpretation of and ob- 
scure text might lead one to suppose that the 
offspring of these unions were "djinni," i.e. 
non-mortal and soulless spirits. 

Cases of intercourse between djinns and mor- 
tals are the basis of many Moslem tales and 
legends in which the sex interest is paramount. 



SEX IN THE NEXT WOELD 83 

But it must be borne in mind that the Moham- 
medan idea of the invisible world is so differ- 
ent from that prescribed either by Eastern or 
Western thought that it is almost impossible 
to co-ordinate it with any of our accepted 
theories. 

On the other hand, no Spiritualist revelation 
or theory is of value unless it fits all lands and 
all creeds. Thus, when the number of spirit 
visitants of African, Eed Indian, or other or- 
igin, is taken into account, it is manifest that 
no abstract theory of morality which is not in 
accordance with the known physical facts con- 
cerning the spirit world, is likely to be prac- 
tised there. 

As time goes on, it will become increasingly 
impossible for the practising Spiritualist to ig- 
nore the enormous fact of sex. At present va- 
rious beliefs are held. These range from the 
pure sexlessness theory, which is manifestly un- 
tenable to variations like a " perfectly pure and 
spiritual sex relationship in no way physical,' ' 
or some such platitude. 

This kind of expression is pure mental flatu- 
lence, for it is clear that in the spirit world there 



84 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

is nothing physical as we know it, and that 
everything there is psychical — again as we know 
it. 

The conception of the spirit world that is 
most widely held does away with all idea of 
penal restrictions. Hell, purgatory, and the 
theological varieties of damnation are contrary 
to the whole conception. Once again we are 
dependent on spirit teaching for our visualiza- 
tion of life in the hereafter, and having estab- 
lished the existence of sex, which would not 
exist unless it implied the permanence of sex- 
ual attraction and sex gratification, we not un- 
reasonably desire to know what, if any, are the 
sex limits in the next life. 

The realm of speculation thus opened up is 
enormous. It is possibly the vision of a volupt- 
uous sensualist heaven. It is possibly the vis- 
ion of a new theory of hell in which spirits are 
unable to obtain the gratification of those de- 
sires which they are equipped to experience. 

There is no particular reason to suppose that 
the married state continues — indeed, there is 
evidence to the reverse. Altogether the prob- 
lems raised are far too great for the little evi- 



SEX IN THE NEXT WOELD 85 

dence we have yet obtained from the spirit 
world to lead us to a true solution. 

As ever we come back to the point of: How 
much is real spirit communication? How much 
is simply well-meaning but inaccurate Spirit- 
ualist interpretation of interpolation? 

The answer of the Spiritualist to such a ques- 
tion is usually the affirmation that " desire does 
not exist in the spirit world." 

This may be good enough to hoodwink the 
amateur or the shallow thinker, but it must 
be remembered that the whole of what we must 
admit is the dark side of Spiritualism, the bad 
or lying spirits, the demons of possession and 
the demons of obsession, all these are active 
affirmations of the reality of desire persisting. 

It is not enough for us to affirm that the dark 
elements are either non-existent or simply the 
effects of our subconscious minds. If these 
rules apply to the dark side they must apply 
to the light side, too. If this were the case 
the whole fabric of Spiritualism crumbles to 
the ground. If we accept any spirit evidence 
we must accept all spirit evidence, and we have 
no right to reject as unsound statements that 



86 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

do not fall in with the theories which we have 
accepted on the strength of similar state- 
ments. 

The continuation of sexual activity on the 
psychic planes may be a staggering conception 
to some people, but a little thought will show 
that it is not half such a shattering idea as the 
perfectly unjustifiable hypothesis that there is 
none. 

The existence of sex in the spirit world leads 
us to the supposition that there are there some 
organized forces of law and order, otherwise 
this conception of the next world would seem 
to be a field where a highly intellectual, intelli- 
gent, and powerful individual soul might enjoy 
a limitless orgy of psychic rape. 

There is no reason to think that such a thing 
is impossible, for cases of demoniac or spirit 
possession are in effect cases of psychic rape 
of a mortal and often present instances of the 
most amazing sexual aberration owing to the 
terrible desires of the uninvited tenant of the 
mind. 

The believing Spiritualist has built on slen- 
der grounds a wonderful conception of the 



SEX IN THE NEXT WOBLD 87 

spirit world, but it is a one-sided structure, and 
it is important to note that the " Everything in 
the garden is lovely l" idea of the next world 
is not by any means borne out by the revela- 
tions of its inhabitants. One can indeed ask 
oneself what ground is there for optimism? 

What reasons other than self-deception, self- 
assurance, and self -flattery are there for sweep- 
ing away the idea of terror, punishment, and 
the inexorable law of Abstract Justice that has 
for ages been held to be implicit in the life 
hereafter? 

The sceptic is indeed justified when, after 
reading reams of well-meant pseudo-religious 
twaddle, he asks the supporters of the new rev- 
elation: "Ajnd why should it all be couleur de 
roseV 9 

Faith may do many things, but Faith can- 
not make black white — even in the realm of the 
spirit. 

There is good reason to suppose that in the 
past many revelations concerning sex-life in the 
spirit plane have been suppressed or destroyed. 
The well-meaning Spiritualist with mediumis- 
tic gifts or the capacity for automatic writing 



88 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

does not always get the precise kind of spirit 
teaching expected. On the other hand, there is 
a wide difference between the meaningless ob- 
scenities that are sometimes sent and various 
coherent statements that can be classed as defi- 
nite revelations. The private operator, knowing 
little of the matters with which he or she is 
dealing, is frequently ashamed to let these 
strange, frank manuscripts or records be seen 
by others. Often they are shown to a wrong 
person, classed as evil spirit writings, and the 
great question that animates the spirit world: 
"Should mortals be told?" again goes on. 

At a seance held in Paris some interesting 
statements concerning the psychic world were 
vouchsafed by a spirit calling itself Zaza Guil- 
bert. There were five of us at the table and 
two of the party were practised automatists. 

First came some personal particulars of the 
spirit. She was born near Grenoble, in Dau- 
phine, in 1826, but was in Paris when Napoleon 
the Third was proclaimed Emperor (1852) and 
was employed with theatrical dressmaking. 
She married and left two girl children. 

It was the question: "Is life in the spirit 



SEX IN THE NEXT WORLD 89 

world as gay and gallant* as it was in those 
days in this sphere V that set the ball roll- 
ing. 

A. That depends on how you look at things. 
We are men and women over here in so far as 
that goes. 

Q. Is life on the spirit plane sexless? 

A. Certainly not! (Emphasis conveyed by 
violent knocking of the table.) 

Q. (By one of the ladies of the party.) Is 
there childbirth in the spirit world? 

A. Not in the same way as on earth. (No 
answer was returned to some further inquiries 
on this subject.) 

Q. Is there separation of the sexes ! 

A. No ; it would be intolerable. 

Q. Is morality of earth binding on the spirit 
plane ? 

A. No ; that would be still more intolerable. 

Q. Have you a husband there ? 

A. No; several affinities. 

Q. Intellectual affinities only? 

A. By no means. 

* The word " gallant " carries rather different implications 
in French than are covered by the literal English rendering of 
"gallant." 



90 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

Q. Can yon compare the relationship to any 
earthly parallel? 

A. Yes. Living une vie de demi-mondame 
sans reproche. 

Q. Do all spirits enjoy life in this manner? 

A. It is not obligatory. 

Q. (By one of the ladies.) Are there scan- 
dals in the spirit world? 

A. Sometimes. 

Q. Are they due to moral censure of higher 
spirits ? 

A. No; jealousy, because higher spirits mix 
themselves up in it. 

Q. Can you describe one of these scandals? 

A. Not through the table. Write. 

Q. You will give it as automatic writing? 

A. Yes. 

One of the automatists left the circle to fetch 
pencil and paper. Then we resumed. The 
power appeared to be instantly forthcoming, and 
the writing stated that: 

"Benedetta Chiesole was the mistress of 
Theodule Affra and several other spirits on our 
plane. 

"This intimacy became obnoxious to a spirit 



SEX IN THE NEXT WORLD 91 

called du Paits Herbault, who was a monk of 
Montpellier in the sixteenth century. He was 
not on our plane but higher up, but was per- 
mitted to come down to us for certain purposes. 
Being on a higher plane, there was no way of 
keeping him out when he was not wanted, for 
he had the power of passing through all psycho- 
material substances that serve us as material 
substances serve you. 

"His persecution of Benedetta was remark- 
able, for he was astonishingly enamoured of 
her. At length matters got to such a pitch that 
the others protested through the guides. But 
they got cold comfort. They were told not to 
interfere with the higher spirits or it would be 
the worse for them, and Benedetta was told 
that it was natural for her to have to expiate 
her earthly shortcomings in this manner. ' ' 

The results of other sittings at which other 
spirits have made communications are in some 
cases quite as detailed and a great deal more 
startling than the above. In addition, a great 
mass of what may be definitely termed abnormal 
sex literature has come from the pens of people 
practising automatic writing — and it is an in- 



92 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

dubitable fact that some of these writings have 
been written under control by people of irre- 
proachable life and character. 

The common-sense explanation is that these 
writings and communications have nothing what- 
ever to do with spirits and that these are, so 
to speak, a seething up of illegal desires and 
ideas which have been repressed by the con- 
scious mind into the censorship of the sublim- 
inal self. This theory is only tenable if the 
whole basic doctrine that these things are com- 
municated by spirits is given up. 

If, on the other hand, we hold that there is 
anything at all in Spiritualism we are faced 
with the inevitable conclusion that, however 
much we may desire to get rid of it, sex is as 
troublesome in the next world as in this.* 

* The notes and papers concerning the physiological side of 
sex in the next world that have been collected are not suitable 
for general reading. Experienced Spiritualists will have no 
difficulty in surmising the general character of these records 



CHAPTER VI 

THE REALITY OF SOBCERY 

I have often been asked by folk who were per- 
fectly serious in their inquiry if there "was 
anything in" latter-day sorcery, and whether 
the practice actually existed outside the realm 
of fiction. It is a difficult question to answer, 
for the average man mixes up witchcraft, sor- 
cery and necromancy, and one cannot be cer- 
tain whether he is alluding to the dark ceremony 
of the Black Sabbath, to the use of occult knowl- 
edge for malevolent purposes, or whether he is 
thinking of wax images and pine, incantations 
and night rides astride a broomstick. 

Put in a simpler form, the question comes 
to this : Can experienced occultists utilize spirit 
or unknown natural forces for malevolent 
uses? The answer is an unhesitating affirm- 
ative. Under certain conditions, it can be 
done. 

Magic has always been divided into white or 

93 



94 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

good magic, and black or bad magic. Both 
have been liberally endowed with ritual observ- 
ance, but shorn of non-essentials the determin- 
ing factor that decides whether magic is black 
or white is the secret intent of the operating 
magician. 

In the past the great popular attribute of 
the magician was his knowledge of healing. He 
was not only a seer of the future and a finder 
of lost things, but also a healer. On the re- 
verse side may be set against his capacity for 
healing his power for casting spells or doing 
harm; against his draughts of beneficent medi- 
cine, his vials of poison. 

The doctor who uses hypnotic treatment, prac- 
tises suggestion or act as a psychotherapeutist, 
is to-day the direct twentieth-century descend- 
ant of the magicians of the past. Apollonius of 
Tyana is his patron; Merlin worked his won- 
ders by the same rules. 

It is to the modern studies in psychic science 
that we must turn to find the underlying mechan- 
isms of magic practices, for a full three-quarters 
of art magic is due to the little-known effects 
of hypnotism or suggestion, and but a shadowy 



THE REALITY OF SORCERY 95 

balance to the powers of discarnate intelligences 
of evil. 

The discoveries of the existence of " animal 
magnetism" by Mesmer was the first step which 
brought the psychic phenomena of will domina- 
tion out of the realm of the occult into the do- 
main of medical knowledge. For a century Mes- 
mer 's theory has been discredited, but to-day 
modern students of psychic science are begin- 
ning to pay attention to it again. 

It fell into discredit owing to the discoveries 
of Braid, the Manchester physician, who dis- 
covered that Mesmer 's phenomena could be pro- 
duced independently of the theory of "animal 
magnetism" by plain hypnosis. 

Braid's theories were followed out by Cher- 
cot and the Paris School of Hypnotists, and 
their theories were in turn demolished by Lie- 
bault and Bernheim of the Nancy School, who 
held that all the phenomena of hypnotism in 
their turn were produced by suggestion. 

In point of actual fact, advanced thinkers of 
to-day hold that the same effect may be pro- 
duced by all three methods of practice. In the 
same way we may produce a given electrical 



96 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

phenomenon such as the lighting of an incan- 
descent lamp by the action of chemical solu- 
tions on metals in a battery, or by the rotation 
of a coil of wire between magnetic poles in a 
dynamo. The methods are different, but the 
forces evolved and the effect obtained are iden- 
tical. 

The lay mind will follow my argument bet- 
ter if I use the loose terms of hypnotism and 
hypnosis than if I attempt a more scientific 
terminology. 

The first point that must be grasped is that 
the sorcerer or wizard possesses psychic gifts 
or qualities of an entirely different order to 
those claimed by Spiritualists. 

The sorcerer is a hypnotist — that is to say, 

he is an individual who possesses the power 

of emitting or radiating an unknown psychic 

force. 

* 

Most people are neutral, they neither rad- 
iate this force nor do they oppose or resist its 
passage, but the individuals who are suscepti- 
ble to its action seem to possess the faculty of 
arresting this radiation and converting it to 
mental energy within themselves. These are 



THE REALITY OF SORCERY 97 

the people who are what is known as good hyp- 
notic subjects. 

In the histories of the great sorcerers of the 
past the assistant, that is to say the subject, 
plays as important a role as does the mage 
himself, for the subject is the instrument of 
the master. 

The average person who possesses medium- 
is tic or psychic qualities in the Spiritualistic 
sense, is in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred 
in a greater or lesser degree a sensitive hyp- 
notic subject. 

The odd few who do not come in the above 
category may be classed as hermaphroditic or 
doubly gifted individuals who possess both rad- 
ating power and subjectivity. One or two noted 
materializing mediums of the past have been 
thus endowed. 

In the usual circle there is the medium and 
the sitters. Some of these may be neutral, but 
in an average circle there are one or more who 
possess unknown to themseles a certain amount 
of radiant force. It is this which passes along 
the chain of hands to the medium where it is 
arrested and condensed to play its mysterious 



98 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

part in the liberation of psychic elements that 
can be utilized by the unseen spirit workers. 

If there is present in the circle an individual 
who is greatly endowed with this force — and 
whofjfe mental desires approximate to black 
rather than white magic, we have an instance 
of those dread dangers that beset those who 
unwittingly pass beyond the threshold of the 
known. 

The trance state of the medium is akin to 
light hypnosis and the subject or medium of a 
well-meaning little circle of Spiritualists may, 
unknown to him or herself, become the slave 
of one or other of the members of the circle. 

It is an asseveration with hypnotists that 
they have no power without the consent of the 
individual. But once they have won the entry 
of the mind that entry is theirs for ever, and 
even the bodily presence of the operator is not 
required to achieve this domination of the mind 
of the subject.* 

The common instances where this kind of 
thing occurs cannot be classed as true sorcery, 

* Chapter X of Professor Boirac's Psychic Science " Ex- 
perimental Researches in Sleep Provoked at a Distance." 



THE REALITY OF SORCERY 99 

for in most cases the operator is unconscious 
of how or why the fulfilment of his desires comes 
about. The true sorcery only comes in when 
an individual possessing the required psychic 
faculty, and in addition, occult knowledge, ex- 
erts these of set purpose in order to gratify 
his desires. 

Vengeance of an enemy, the subjugation of 
another's will, the satisfaction of a sex pas- 
sion, all these are motives for sorcery. The 
witch-doctor of West Africa, the voodoo priest- 
esses of Cuba and Hayti practise these accom- 
plishments no less than their white brethren 
in black magic. Sorcery lives to-day no less 
than it lived centuries ago. There are several 
roads to its portals — but not a track leading 
back to the regions of light for those that pass 
its gates. 

The first aim of the sorcerer is to get the 
victim in a state of suggestibility. This can 
be accomplished in a dozen different ways well 
known to the practised student. 

In the first, fumes of a special sort of in- 
cense played no inconsiderable part in the role 
of sorcery. According to ritual they are to pro- 



100 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

pitiate the spirits — in actual practice they in- 
duce relaxation on the part of the subject and 
assist in building up that necessary atmosphere 
which is essential to suggestibility. 

The effect of darkness, of points of light 
gleaming amid surrounding dark, the magic mir- 
ror or the crystal globe; all these were more 
than stage properties — they are the mechani- 
cal implements of suggestion. 

Let us suppose that some weak and curious 
woman visits a sorcerer to obtain his help in 
some affair of heart. The man of mystery seats 
her in a comfortable chair; the lights are low- 
ered and he tells her to gaze at the crystal ball 
upon the table before her. 

Fumes of incense hang in the heavy air. The 
man's voice is clear, dominant, and sonorous; 
slowly it becomes soothingly monotonous. 

Gradually the client feels languor stealing 
over her. The crystal becomes cloudy and in 
the globe appears something that she knows 
and recognizes. 

Probably the crystal tells her nothing that 
means anything to her. Certainly she has seen 
in it nothing but what she has known at some 



THE EEALITY OF SORCERY 101 

time before,* or something that the magician 
has seen before. But the net result is that she 
is convinced of the occult powers possessed by 
him. 

This is the prelude to other visits and little 
by little her will yields to that of the sorcerer 
and the suggestions that he has implanted in 
her subconscious mind begin to take effect. If 
he is a daring scoundrel, his domination may 
take any form. Unconscious that she is not act- 
ing of her own free will, she may yet be brought 
to place at his disposal everything and anything 
that he may require of her. 

He has invoked no spirit aids, but has caused 
the powers of hypnotism and suggestion, tak- 
ing advantage of the light condition of hypnosis 
induced by the crystal-gazing. Police and press 
persecutions of the Seers of Bond Street are 
not altogether unjustified in many cases. The 
real facts may not be brought out at the court, 
owing to the shame that publicity would inflict 
upon the dupes, but the prosecution is, in nine 
cases out of ten, justifiable. 



* See Proceedings of La Societe Universelle d'Etudes Psy- 
chiques and Proceedings S.P.R., V and VIII. 



102 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

The class of petty criminals above mentioned 
are again not true sorcerers, in that they only 
use occult natural forces, summoning to their 
aid no spirit attributes. In the lowest grade of 
the sorcerers we find the necromancers. 

There are still a few of these in Paris and 
latterly there was one in the West Country. It 
depends on the individual operator how much 
of his ceremonial is for the purpose of inducing 
suggestibility or partial hypnosis and how much 
is for the direct evocation of evil spirits. Very 
often the necromancer himself is deluded enough 
to confuse natural with supernatural power. 

There is a certain class of spirits to whom 
the ancients gave the name of Lemures. These 
can be semi-materialized, made visible, and 
bound to service by a comparatively simple rit- 
ual, for in place of needing the material vehicle 
of ectoplasm, extended by a materializing me- 
dium, they can take shape from the emanations 
of warm blood. 

This vital fluid plays an important part in all 
magical ceremony. We find mention of it from 
the days when Ulysses poured blood and wine 
into a trench to call up the spirits before he 



THE EEALITY OF SORCERY 103 

went down into hell. In the dark history of 
Gilles de Retz * the blood ritual is seen in all 
its ghostliest fluorescence. The calabash of 
blood of the " white goat" is essential in obi 
and voodoo magic, and blood, fresh blood, not 
necessarily but preferably human, is used by 
the necromancer of to-day. 

Those learned in occult matters will readily 
perceive the precious function that blood eman- 
ations exercise, but on the contrary, the man of 
science and the psychologist will not be able to 
understand the part that blood plays in this 
peculiar alchemy. 

It must be clearly understood that experiment 
of this nature is extraordinarily perilous and 
that any attempt at necromancy by students 
whose knowledge is insufficient can have none 
but disastrous results.! 

The elemental forces evoked by this ceremony 
may be compared to gunpowder. Any fool can 
blow himself up with powder by setting a match 
to it, but it takes a skilled artillerist to harness 

* See " Gilles de Rais, dit Barbe Bleu." Bonsard et Maulde, 
History of Magic, Chapter VI : " Eliphas Levi." In fiction, 
Huysman's La-Bas. 

t For obvious reasons I have suppressed the detail of 
ritual. 



104 A MODEBN OCCULTIST 

the forces and make them propel a projectile 
to a given target. Experiment with elemental 
forces is analogous and the greater part of the 
ritual deals with the protection of the operator 
or sorcerer himself from those dread spirits who 
obey his summons. 

In 1912 I attended the course of lectures on 
psychic science given at a sub-school of the Uni- 
versity of Jena. A fellow-student there gave 
me a letter of introduction to Gottlieb Bentle- 
meyer, a professor of law at one of the Hanover 
Hochschulen and an ardent student of black 
magic. 

At that time he had rooms in the Wiesen- 
strasse and had in his charge one or two pri- 
vate pupils whom he was cramming for their 
necessary examinations. One of these lads, a 
youngster from Stettin, in North Prussia, was 
his assistant in the necromantic art, and was a 
most highly gifted sensitive or hypnotic subject. 

It was not until we had had several ordinary 
seances and he had shown me some astounding 
experiments in the externalization of sensibility 
and clairvoyance under hypnosis that I deemed 
it fit to mention the subject of necromancy. 



THE REALITY OF SORCERY 105 

We were at that time in the Hanover Museum 
and had been examining an exhibit of "Qual- 
apparat" — racks, winches, and torturing-irons 
of various descriptions. It was our discussion 
of the possible sending of the spirit of his assist- 
ant, Walther Kraus, under hypnosis to psycho- 
metrize these vile memorials of a brutal past 
that raised the subject. We came to the conclu- 
sion that the experiment would be extremely 
hazardous, but Bentlemeyer kindly offered to 
attempt to call up the spirit of one or more of 
the men who had used these things. 

"It will not be an easy task to find them," 
he said, "but being men of blood it may be pos- 
sible to find them by means of the blood ele- 
mentals." 

It took us three days to make our prepara- 
tions, for although Bentlemeyer had an excellent 
and systematically arranged cabinet of magical 
requisites, one or two things had to be pro- 
cured. 

His association with the Hochschule enabled 
him to obtain fresh blood through the agency 
of one of his medical colleagues. 

We rehearsed the ritual carefully, in order 



106 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

that there should be no fault, and I must con- 
fess that I prepared myself for the ordeal with 
considerable trepidation. His ceremonial of 
evocation was slightly at variance with accepted 
French practice, but the discrepancies were not 
material and appeared to have crept in during 
the time of King Frederick Wilhelm of Prus- 
sia. Bentlemeyer informed me that the orig- 
inal MS. in German and Hebrew had been in 
the possession of the celebrated Steinert.* 

It was a clear autumn night with a perfect 
moon; the air had a touch of frost in it and 
the great town of Hanover was quiet and still. 

Bentlemeyer was already in his robes when 
one of the pupils admitted me. I changed into 
the necessary garments, took the rod and girdle 
which he had lent me, and placed the snake- 
hilted poniard in its belt sheath. 

The circle of evocation had been marked out 
in chalk on the floor. The prepared candles 
burnt in the angles of the pentacle and the 
saucers of salt and the elements were in their 
appropriate places. The sorcerer stood within 

* Steinert was the chief adept in the Society of the II- 
luminati. See Essai sur la Secte des Illumines, Marquis de 
Lachet. 



THE REALITY OF SORCERY 107 

his circle of protection facing the small tripod 
brazier in which was a brazen plate glowing 
over the frame of a small spirit lamp. 

I took my place within the enceinte of a sim- 
ilar diagram, and on a couch, lying between us, 
was Walther, the assistant. The candle lights 
burnt in the draughtless atmosphere, the dull 
yellowish flames standing up without a flicker, 
sending their faint tail of black smoke toward 
the ceiling. Beyond the confines of our pro- 
tective circles was a grotesque bronze bowl or 
shallow basin. Bentlemeyer removed the black 
velvet hood that covered it and the filmy crim- 
son surface of fresh blood gleamed in the light. 

At a sign we began the chanting of the pre- 
liminary invocations to the guardians of the 
gates. The room was sonorous with the great 
Hebrew names, and from time to time a fresh 
pinch of incense on the brazier would send a 
wreath of pungent fume across the room. 

The boy on the couch breathed heavily, loos- 
ened the restriction of his garments, and soon 
subsided into a definite state of trance. 

From invocation we changed to the ritual of 
evocation. And before the echoes of the first 



108 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

summons had died down, a cold wind seemed 
to burst out in the very heart of the room it- 
self, making the candles nicker and the shad- 
ows flit and dance in arabesques across the low 
ceiling. 

I felt for the poniard at my belt and drawing 
it from its sheath held the naked blade ready.* 

The second and third utterances of the words 
of power intensified the effect and the boy 
moaned pitifully. 

Bentlemeyer signed to me with his rod to 
look toward the blood bowl. 

The surface of the liquid was being slowly 
agitated, strong swirls and broken wave mo- 
tions appeared on the surface, sluggish, irides- 
cent bubbles floated for a while and burst, and 
at last the whole body of fluid within the bowl 
was in a state of violent agitation. 

The sorcerer bent to a vessel on the ground 
and threw upon the brazier some new essence — 
not an incense. The smoke wreathed itself 
above the brazier, then seemed to take shape like 
a pillar and curve toward the blood bowl. 

* Elementals cannot face pointed steel. Probably because 
the latter concentrates radiations of psychic force from the 
human body which are destructive to them. 



THE KEALITY OF SOKCEEY 109 

Slowly yet distinctly the vapours clustered 
above the blood and slowly took semi-human 
shape. Incessantly they changed and melted — 
now limb-like, here betraying the outline of a 
demon face, there a pillared, smoothly working 
trunk. 

From the bowl came a noise like cats ' tongues 
lapping and now and then the bowl itself would 
tilt and move a fraction of an inch or so about 
the floor. For a moment we watched this mon- 
strous manifestation in silence. Then the sor- 
cerer resumed his ritual and bound the spirits 
present to do his bidding to the spell of the 
Three Known and One Unknown elements. 

"What are your names V 9 he asked, and the 
elemental demons or spirits speaking through 
the trance-bound boy gave them. 

"Who is your leader V 9 There was a mo- 
mentary hesitation, and then a spirit answer- 
ing to the name of A]malik assumed the leader- 
ship. 

"Have you been a mortal V 9 

"No, I was never mortal. I was an earth- 
spirit, serving the priests of Odin till the Cross 
came." 



110 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

"What brought you here to-night ?" 

"The Blood Libation and the summons. 
What do you want of us ? We wish to depart. ' ' 

"You are bound to do my bidding by the 
words of Might. You may not go. I want you 
to find for me the spirit of one of the men of 
blood who used the torture instruments in the 
Museum.' ' 

"I do not know the men." 

"I command you to seek them. I command 
all of you by the powers that are mine to seek 
and bring them." 

For a moment there was silence, broken only 
by the laboured breathing of the boy. Then 
he spoke again. 

"I have found one, Masters." 

"What is his name?" 

"Kurt Ettethurm." 

"He is to answer my questions himself. 
Where did you live?" 

A new and harsher voice issued from the 
boy's lips. 

"By Sachsenhausen, near Augsburg." 

"When?" 

"In the time of Charles the Fifth of Spain." 



THE EEALITY OF SORCERY 111 

"Were you one of his torturers?" 

"No, I served Count Anton of Tornen/ ? 

1 ' Who were your victims ? ' ' 

"Criminals, bandits, and Lutherans.' ' 

"When did you die?" 

"At Muhlberg." 

"When — not where?" 

"At Muhlberg— killed in the battle of Muhl- 
berg." 

"Where are you now?" 

"Why ask? I am in a lower state." 

"Do you revisit this sphere unless sum- 
moned ? ' ' 

"I am always here, but you cannot see me." 

"Where are you usually?" 

"By the slaughter houses." 

"Do you move from place to place?" 

"Yes, I follow the Scharfrichter (heads- 
man).* 

"Why?" 

"To watch." 

"Are you bound to?" 

"No, I like it." 

i 

* In Germany capital punishment is still carried out by 
the headsman, who beheads with a sword. 



112 A MODEEN OCCULTIST 

"Can you show yourself to us?" 

a I do not think so. Help me and I will 
try." 

"How can we help you?" 

"Place that bowl of blood at the northern 
corner of the pentacle." 

I must have started to move forward, for 
Bentlemeyer shouted at me to keep still, and I 
realized in a flash that I had nearly been 
trapped into going beyond the protection of my 
circle. 

The boy began to chuckle horribly and then 
suddenly choked. Before our eyes his face be- 
came empurpled, his eyes seemed to start from 
his head, and the tongue protruded. His legs 
kicked and his hands beat feebly at something 
solid — impenetrable — but invisible, that poised 
in the empty air above him. 

"Stop it, for God's sake!" I cried to Bentle- 
meyer. 

My voice awoke him from the creeping par- 
alysis of terror that was mastering him, and 
raising the scroll of the ritual he recovered 
himself by an effort of will, and uttered the 
words of the spell of release. 



THE EEALITY OF SOKCEB.Y 113 

A swirl of icy cold wind seemed to sweep 
about us, and I stabbed at the invisible grasp 
that seemed to be plucking at my garments. 
Two of the candles went out and the windows 
rattled violently in their frames. Then with 
frightening suddenness the manifestations 
ceased. 

The boy was gasping for breath once more 
and the terror had passed. 

Not until the last of the valedictory phrases 
of the ritual had been said did either of us dare 
leave our stations. Then both of us, shocked 
and terrified by what we had seen, went over 
to the boy Walther. 

He was deeply entranced yet, breathing heav- 
ily; the colour had not yet ebbed from his face 
and on his brow were beads and runnels of 
perspiration. 

Bentlemeyer made a few passes, breathed on 
his eyelids, and brought him round. But there 
on his uncollared neck was the dark, bruised 
imprint of strangling fingers. 

• • • • • 

This experience was phenomenal. We exam- 
ined the room carefully afterwards and came 



114 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

to the conclusion that the conch on which Wal- 
ther was lying projected at one corner over the 
circuit of the diagram that should have pro- 
tected it. The identity of the spirit we could 
not determine. Whether it was really the spirit 
of the executioner or torturer, whether it was 
merely an impersonation by a demon elemental, 
or what particular denizen of the realm of evil 
it was that came to the summons and the blood 
bowl I cannot say. 

I learnt later that Bentlemeyer was, despite 
his learning and his professional standing, a 
man of notoriously evil and depraved life. 
There is no doubt that our experiences that 
evening thoroughly startled him. A brother 
student of proven reliability told me later that 
Bentlemeyer had assured him that he could and 
did evoke evil spirits, and evoke them to exe- 
cute malicious tricks upon his confreres in the 
professional world. 

In this connection it is interesting to note 
that when looking through his cabinet of mag- 
ical instruments I saw two small nude waxen 
models, male and female. I asked at the time 
the purpose of these and he explained that they 



THE EEALITY OF SOKCERY 115 

were used by him in a hypnotic experiment with 
Walther. This was the phenomenon known as 
externalization of sensibility. 

Under hypnosis Walther 's feeling of sensa- 
tion could be transferred by the operator to 
any object, such as a glass of water or a waxen 
doll. A pin-prick on the surface of the water 
would be felt by him as an acute pricking sen- 
sation all over the body. When the doll was 
used, pain was felt by Walther in the precise 
place where the doll was pricked.* 

The hypothesis is that the sorcerer and 
wizard of the Middle Ages made use of this 
phenomenon and that their victims were the 
unconscious victims of hypnosis. Before this hy- 
pothesis can be dismissed by the sceptic it should 
be remembered that sorcery flourished best in 
ages of faith and superstition. An active belief 
in the powers of sorcery or witchcraft facili- 
tates not only direct suggestion, but also sug- 
gestion on self -hypnosis. 

A point of interest is that the effects of sor- 
cery or evil suggestion are capable of being 

* Chapter II, Psychical and Supernormal Phenomena, by Dr. 
Paul Joire; Chapter XV, Psychic Science, by Emile Boriac, 
and numerous other works give details of this phenomenon. 



116 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

remedied by people who understand the subject. 
Exorcism is valuable and is as real as sorcery, 
and it is by no means a lost art among those 
occultists who have studied the dark side of 
spirit phenomena in order to know all that we 
are allowed to know of this dangerous subject. 
Above all things, the Spiritualist who has 
certain healing qualities in connection with me- 
diumistic gifts should avoid any attempt at ex- 
orcism. Cases have been known when the at- 
tempt was successful, but only in so far that 
the evil was transferred from the original vic- 
tim to the would-be healer. As a rule, the re- 
sults are bad for both parties. The mental and 
consequently physical dangers of this kind of 
thing are far too serious to be lightly meddled 
with. One cannot insist on this too strongly. 



CHAPTER Vn 

INCENSE AND OCCULTISM 

The ancients possessed amazing secrets con- 
cerning psychic knowledge of all kinds. Apart 
from the philosophical tenets held by the va- 
rious degrees of priestcraft there was a special 
secret knowledge of what may be called the 
mechanical side. They knew how to produce 
phenomena. 

Then as now, the specially gifted were used 
in connection with the service of mysteries, but 
in all the old cults which attained to any degree 
of organization the arch-priests or hierophants 
were not themselves mediums, but made use of 
mediums as instruments. The role played by 
the medium was a more or less unimportant 
one just as to-day the " psychics'' used by the 
different sects of Tibetan Lamas are relatively 
unimportant and insignificant members of the 
priestcraft. 

The priests had, however, other secrets — se- 

117 



118 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

crets which on occasion conferred the gift of 
vision on the ordinary non-psychic person. Sa- 
cerdotalism and royalty were closely allied not 
only in ancient Egypt, but throughout the bulk 
of the mid-Oriental and Byzantine cults. Then 
as now, people demanded proof of miracles and 
the proof had to be forthcoming. 

Little by little, savants have recovered from 
hieroglyph and papyri, from stone and manu- 
script, something of the great rituals and some- 
thing of both the outer and inner forms of 
these dead faiths. 

We know enough to realize that the adepts 
possessed the art of releasing the spirit from 
the body and of producing the trance state not 
only in individuals but in comparatively large 
congregations. 

The two hypotheses are the agency of hypno- 
tism and the agency of some mechanical or phys- 
iological factor such as a drug. 

The possibilities of hypnotism in the form 
of crowd suggestion cannot be overlooked, but 
it does not entirely account for some of the 
phenomena that tradition has handed down and 
which is substituted by contemporary record. 



INCENSE AND OCCULTISM 119 

Analysis of some of these cults shows that 
the initiates partook of a ceremonial drink or 
brew of some kind and that there is a more than 
mystical use of the censer. Nine-tenths of the 
so-called propitiatory ritual was symbolic, but 
there remains an unexplained tenth part whose 
agency was primarily that of mechanical ex- 
citant of what one may term "psychism" — 
those qualities of perception that we class as 
psychic gifts. 

It is precisely these extraordinarily valuable 
secrets that were among the deepest arts of the 
priestcraft. There was no record of these — 
nothing direct is to be found in the writings, 
and although it is possible to recover the phil- 
osophic bases of the myths these rule-of-thumb 
mysteries still elude us. 

After all, many other similar secrets, and 
even fairly well-known common facts of an- 
tiquity, have been lost to us. We do not know 
the composition of the celebrated Eoman fish 
sauce "garum." We cannot tell what are the 
ingredients of Stradivarius ' violin varnishes or 
some old master's colours. Nevertheless, it is 
unreasonable to suppose that the necessary ma- 



120 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

terials have vanished from the earth. We have 
the whole known world to ransack for them 
where the ancients had only a limited and cir- 
cumscribed number of plants, beasts, and min- 
erals from which to gather their ingredients. 

The function of some drugs is to produce 
mental effects, visions, hallucinations, dreams, 
and phantoms. The logical assumption is that 
the ancients knew certain rule-of-thumb meth- 
ods of utilizing some forms of these drugs in 
such a way as to loosen the hold of the body 
(and the consciousness) upon the mind, and to 
produce an artificial state of clairvoyance. 

The wizard of the Middle Ages was also a 
doctor, and it is claimed that the familiar that 
inhabited the sword of Paracelsus — which 
sword he always had by him and could never 
be parted from — was none other than a certain 
amount of opium concealed in the hollow 
pommel.* 

The function of hypnotic drugs is known to 
a point. That is to say, we know what effect is 
produced on a normal individual by a given 
dose of an unknown drug, but in nine cases out 

* Paracelsus, Fr. A. Rufini. 



INCENSE AND OCCULTISM 121 

of ten we do not know precisely how this effect 
is brought about and have few clues to the ser- 
ies of physiological reactions that bring about 
the mental state. 

The connection between a physical draught 
and a mental state is indicated throughout the 
history of magic. Ceremonial libations, ritual 
consumption of potions or " devil 's brews' ' of 
one kind and another are part and parcel of 
the traditions of necromancy and sorcery. 

The connection between these hypnotic 
draughts and the practice of poisoning was not 
clearly perceived by most writers of the past. 
Sorcery and poisoning were indeed twin prac- 
tices of the Middle Ages, for where the spell 
might fail white arsenic would succeed, but it 
is not fair to class all magical potions as prep- 
arations of secret poisons, although in point of 
fact most of the hypnotic drugs are toxic. 

The methods of administering the drugs are 
two — namely, by draught, that is to say by di- 
rect consumption, and inhalation. The function 
of the incense used in thaumaturgical ceremon- 
ies was primarily to intoxicate the audience. 

Just as the Pythoness of the Delphic oracles 



122 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

inhaled the vapours of the magic cave, so the 
Egyptians inhaled prepared incenses in their 
temples. The casting of herbs upon the fire, 
the burning of prepared sacrificial candles or 
flambeaux, all these play their part in the me- 
chanical induction of the psychic state. 

Frankincense and myrrh, and in particular 
gum benzoin, possess soothing properties that 
effect the throat and nasal passages. Besides 
being pleasant, these gums formed an excellent 
vehicle for disguising the scent of other matters 
and preventing their spasmodic or instant ac- 
tion on the throat. 

The kyphic or incense of ancient Egypt* was 
compounded of myrrh, gum-mastic, aromatic 
rush roots, resin, and juniper berries. To these 
aromatics were added small quantities of sym- 
bolic elements, such as grapes, honey and wine, 
and a portion of bitumen or asphateurn, whose 
purpose might be either symbolic or to serve 
as a binding medium for the mass. 

In addition to these, various spices and per- 
fumes were used. Cinnamon bark, sandalwood, 
cardamom, and even ambergris and musk. The 

* See Ebers papyri. 



INCENSE AND OCCULTISM 123 

influence of scent upon the emotions is well 
known and the Egyptians favoured the use of 
ambra and musk as definitely aphrodisiacal per- 
fumes. To-day pure essence of patchouli is 
used in the Orient to serve the same end, and 
anybody who has ever smelt a vial of the pure 
oil will recognize the instant disturbance of cer- 
tain nerve centres that it produces. 

The clue to the secret of the ancient incense 
lies not in what we have been able to recover 
from the papyri, but in the word itself. Kyphi 
is recognizable to-day in "keef," the popular 
name for the smokable variety of the herb can- 
nabis indica. 

Cannabis indica is none other than our old 
friend hashish, the haseesh of the writers of 
the time of the Crusades, who gave us those de- 
scriptions of the Old Man of the Mountains 
and his Hasch-hassins. From them we get our 
commonplace word — assassin. 

It is not, after all, a far cry from the mys- 
teries of Osiris in Egypt to the Thammur or 
Dwmuri-absu of Syria and Babylon. 

' ' Thammur came next behind 
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured 



124 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

The Syrian damsels to lament his fate 
In amorous ditties all a summer's day," 

says Milton. 

Osiris and Thammus "died" annually, and 
mimicry of the symbolic event was the basis of 
all ritual. In the mysteries the initiates ' * died, ' ' 
too, but the death was no mere formula, but an 
actually induced state of stupor of deep trance 
brought about by the fumes of the "keef." 

These secrets lingered long in Lebanon, where 
to this day the Crypto -Christianity of the Druses 
may be identified with many of the actual prac- 
tices of magic. 

The master of the Assassins was a master 
hypnotist, using the dark knowledge of certain 
parts of the mechanical ritual of magic to gain 
his mastery over the Moslem youths he sent as 
fanatics to do his bidding. 

There in the Lebanon he created his artificial 
paradise of sensuous delight, drugged dreams 
and slumber. His commands laid upon his 
slaves were no ordinary commands — but spells 
as black as any weaved by sorcery. 

The master lodge of this cult of the Assassins 
was at Cairo and the mysteries were only trans- 



INCENSE AND OCCULTISM 125 

ferred to their new setting in the Lebanon by 
Hassan ibn Sabbah at the end of the eleventh 
century. Outwardly Moslem, the inner myster- 
ies had no connection with either Mohammedan 
or any other religion, and indeed the cult seems 
to be in many ways a kind of bastard Masonic 
organization. 

Nominally a Moslem sect of Ismailites, the or- 
ganization was under a commander, the Sheik- 
al-Tebel, or Chief of the Mountains, who was 
served by minor chiefs or priors — the three Dai- 
al-kirbal. Following these came the Dais or 
adepts, and below them three minor grades, 
Refigos, Fedais, and Lasigos* 

The Fedais or "entered apprentice" grade 
furnished the rank and file of the fanatical ex- 
ecutants of the paramount will, and these 
Fedais, who were customarily mentally and 
physically pathic, never rose above this step in 
the mysteries. 

The Society of the Assassins was nominally 
suppressed by Halaga, the Mogul invader of 
the middle of the thirteenth century, but the 

* See Geschichte der Asassvnen. By T. von Hammer. Burg- 
stall, JJn Grand Maitre des Assassins au Temps du Saladm. 
Also Ars Quatuo Coronati, Vol. 



126 A MODEBN OCCULTIST 

knowledge, the secrets, and the traditions en- 
dured and still endure to this day. 

The organization was undoubtedly an evil 
one; it also had nothing to do with Masonry, 
but it is an interesting example of an occuit 
society whose powers affected the course of 
history, and methods of working were essen- 
tially based upon mechanical rather than 
spiritual methods of producing a certain state 
of mind. 

The effect of hashish is a very difficult thing 
to define. Essentially a hypnotics — an annihila- 
tor of time and space and a stimulant of hallu- 
cinations — it is also a drug largely dependent 
on the idiosyncracy of the individual. The same 
does not necessarily produce equivalent results 
in individuals of differing temperament, and for 
all practical purposes the psychic value of the 
dose varies inversely with the standard of in- 
telligence of the recipient. Also, when dealing 
with subjects of dual or multiple personality, 
it tends to liberate the more violent and un- 
controlled of the individualities. 

Hashish is absorbed rapidly. Cases have been 
known where a little of the extract used as an 



INCENSE AND OCCULTISM 127 

anodyne in corn plasters has been absorbed and 
produced hallucinatory state. As a smoke, 
veiled by incense or mixed with tobacco, rapid 
intoxication results from its inhalation. This 
was one of the keys — perhaps the greatest of 
the keys — to the storehouse of those treasures 
of the mind which are the time Elixir, the True 
Gold of the Magi. 

In actual practice there is a preliminary state 
of suggestibility under the influence of hashish 
when the operator can exercise his will upon 
that of the subject. This stage is soon passed 
over and in the later dream states suggestion is 
inoperative. 

The modern pharmacist has lost the secret of 
the herb whose therapeutic function is to con- 
trol the action of the cannabis indica, so that 
the subject remained in the suggestible state 
and did not pass on to the later stages of hallu- 
cinatory visions. 

We may take it that so far as the old world 
is concerned, the half of the secret has been 
recovered, but the balancing or deterrent herb 
is still unrecognized by the pharmacopoeia and 
known only to a specialist few among experi- 



128 A MODEEN OCCULTIST 

mental occultists. Just as hashish itself is miss- 
ing from the recipient, the Ebers papyri, so is 
the balancing coefficient.* 

On the other hand, the same secret of priest- 
craft is known on the other side of the Atlantic. 
!We may or may not believe in the myth of lost 
Atlantis and the transmitted ritual, but both the 
Zaquis of Sonora and the Tamachecks of Gua- 
temala possess a ritual observance in which 
cannabis Americana, a new cousin of the can- 
nabis indica, is the stimulant agent. 

Other tribes use a brew of the mescal bean, 
but this a purely American species and the ac- 
tive principle anhalonium,f does not act on pre- 
cisely the same nerve centres as the cannabin- 
ote principle of the hemps. 

In both cases the induction of a species of 
intoxication by means of the sacred herbs gath- 
ered in certain lunar or astrological aspects is 
held by the natives fo be the basis of the com- 
munion with the spirits of the departed dead. 
The Spiritualist believes that there are spirits 
of the dead, the physiologist claims that the 

*The public interest would not be served by the revelation 
of the second missing ingredient, but it is now known. 
t See monograph on Mescal by Havelock Ellis. 



INCENSE AND OCCULTISM 129 

" spirits' ' are hallucinatory or that they are 
merely reflex as from the subconscious mind of 
the individual or of other individuals. This 
twin explanation runs through all psychic phe- 
nomena, but not until all phenomena known to 
be produced by Spiritualist circles can be pro- 
duced under hynopsis will the Spiritualist 
theory be finally disproved. 

The rank and file of Spiritualists are unaware 
that the scientific world has a demonstrable 
answer to nine-tenths of the wonder that the 
believing Spiritualist is convinced can only 
occur by means of discarnate spirit intelli- 
gences. But the honest investigator should 
bear in mind that only certain rare phenomena 
remain unchallenged and are at present unat- 
tainable by practising psychologists. 

When the phenomena of materialization — the 
externalization of force — are producible by hyp- 
notists, then the whole spirit hypothesis is im- 
perilled, for the scientists will be able to pro- 
duce these effects not by spirit intervention but 
at the behest of human will. 

Still, for the moment, the uncritical white, 
like the barbarous Indian, is justified in his be- 



130 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

lief in external spirit agency as the only ex- 
planation for the apparently miraculous. 

A friend of mine who had been a member of 
an exploring expedition whose mission was to 
trace a tributary of the river Usmacinta in 
Chiapas on the Mexico-Guatemala border to its 
source in the volcanic country round the un- 
known Lago de Peten, made a careful study of 
the ritual of the Tamachacks. 

These people still carry out a pre-Columbian 
religion which antedates that of the Aztec and 
Toltec civilizations both of Mexico and the 
Yucatan peninsula. 

Essentially symbolic in that it takes into ac- 
count primitive nature and ancestor worship, 
the basis of the cult is the evocation of the 
spirits of the departed dead for tribal and per- 
sonal counsel and consultation. The means em- 
ployed in the production of the psychic state is 
the smoke of. the cannabis americana. The na- 
tive name of this herb is marihuana. 

The following is my friend's description of 
one of the actual native ceremonies at which he 
was present: 

"We were up in the Intamal country about 



INCENSE AND OCCULTISM 131 
four days' hard river travelling beyond the San 
Cristobal frontier. Little by little, the isolated 
plantations disappeared, and soon we were deep 
in the untouched jungle country where there 
are only native villages. 

"That day I was with the advance party, and 
as we were making a fairly complete cadastral 
survey of our route, we deviated slightly toward 
a largish jungle-covered hill that would furnish 
us with an excellent commanding position for 
triangulation. 

"My native peons were carrying our little* 
transit theodolite and we were following a na- 
tive track that led toward the hill when our 
party was suddenly surrounded. 

"A whistle blew in the jungle and out from 
the bush came semi-nude Indians variously 
armed. A few had trade guns, but the bulk 
carried the inevitable machete, while a minority 
had short bows and long quivers of obsidian- 
headed arrows. 

"They offered us no overt violence, but made 
it abundantly clear that they resented any party 
attempting to scale their hill. Most of the dia- 
logue was in the native tongue, a debased ag~ 



132 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

glutinative inflective speech similar to Nanhatl. 
The leader, who wore a peculiar breastplate of 
f eatherwork, could, however, talk Spanish com- 
paratively fluently. 

"My greatest trouble was to induce him to 
understand that we were not a prospecting 
party and were not after gold. Talk with our 
men who had been with us some months finally 
reassured him. A chance compliment of mine 
about his feather breastplate, which was of 
quetzal feathers, opened the magic door to me. 

"It was astonishing to that Indian, who had 
probably not seen a hundred white men, as dis- 
tinct from Mexicans, in all his life, to find in me 
a man who knew more about the mythological 
importance of the quetzal bird than he knew 
himself. 

"My work on the ruined cities of Yucatan 
and my studies of the Mittall codices and simi- 
lar work had given me a sound knowledge of 
the worship of Quetzalcoatl the god of the 
Morning Star, to whom the wonderful emerald- 
plumaged quetzal bird is sacred. 

' ' To cut a long story short, I arranged things 
with the head-man so that we could camp in his 



INCENSE AND OCCULTISM 133 

village that night. The people were kindly, 
once they understood that we were not gold 
hunters and meant no harm, and my friend the 
head-man, having introduced me to certain 
elders and discussed with them my knowledge 
of their almost extinct faith, invited me to be 
present as a participant in a religious feast to 
be held that night. 

"The feast was that of the Cozca cuaptli — 
. the feast of vultures, birds as important in the 
Mayan underworld as in the Egyptian cere- 
monies. 

"Shortly after dusk I left the village with 
them, going alone and to all external seeming 
unarmed. We made a long journey through the 
bush, climbing higher all the time, and I real- 
ized that we were actually on the sacred hill that 
they had forbidden us to ascend. 

"Here and there along the route we were 
stopped by sentries or guards, but at last gained 
the top of the hill. Here, encircled by trees, 
was a flat table top or plateau a few acres in 
extent. 

"Eising on the plateau was a series of three 
square terraces culminating in a small ruined 



134 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

building, roofless yet sound as to its walls. The 
lowest plateau was packed with Indians; on 
the second were congregated the elect— the 
tribal seniors and the priests. Above them a 
figure or two moved in the building. 

"My friends took some time explaining my 
presence, and it was obvious that I was re- 
garded with dark disfavour by the mass of the 
natives. Soon it dawned on me that I was 
under guard, an unobtrusive guard, but never- 
theless under guard. At last I was taken to the 
high priest of the ceremonial. 

"He was a wonderful old Indian who spoke 
the accented Latin Spanish of forgotten gen- 
erations. He examined me, and though I could 
not reply to certain mysterious ritualistic ques- 
tions that he put to me, he was at length satis- 
fied that I had an efficient working knowledge 
not only of his ritual but of its underlying astro- 
nomical and philosophical significance. Even- 
tually he was satisfied, and on a word from him 
I was taken in hand by two native youths who 
bound a fillet of red-dyed wool worked with 
feather devices round my brow and gave me a 
peeled rod surmounted by a vulture's skull to 



INCENSE AND OCCULTISM 135 

hold as a wand of office. Over my clothes was 
put a loose dark brown cotton robe sewn with 
charms and trimmed at each shoulder with 
tufts of sombre plumage. 

' 'Thus dressed I took my place among the 
elders. For a while nothing happened, then 
slowly the noise of the crowd died down and 
expectancy gave place to clamour. From some- 
where in the forest came the sudden rhythm of 
native drums seemingly casual, inopportune, 
and meaninglessly oadenced. 

" Little by little the monotony of the drum 
throbbing became more insistent, more defi- 
nitely rhythmical. A brazier in the temple 
building began to glow red, and far below in 
the valley mists we could see a group of flaring 
torches dancing like fireflies as their bearers 
scaled the difficult trail. 

" Suddenly the voice of the chief priest rose 
in a high-pitched wailing call, and as he hailed, 
a new and brilliant star seemed to spring into 
being over the dark crest of a nearby hill. 

"The assemblage bowed to the star and 
broke into a wailing Indian chant that kept time 
to the beating of the hidden throbbing drums. 



136 A MODEBN OCCULTIST 

" After the prayer came the dance. To the 
centre of the second terrace bearers carried 
what looked like a bundle of blankets; then 
nude but for feather adornments, the young 
initiates came forward in processional dance. 
Every tenth man held a torch, and the dancers 
carried out a long ballet symbolical of the burial 
or consumption of the mortal body of the 
vultures. 

i t They hopped grotesquely like the ill-omened 
zopilotes or scavenger vultures they initiated. 
A querulous clucking accompaniment was ut- 
tered by the chorus of spectators and the files 
of bronze bodies advanced and retreated, 
swayed and circled in slow-hopping processions 
around the blanketed heap upon the ground 
that represented the body. 

' 1 Suddenly the drum rhythm changed and a 
curious whistling pipe music was heard. The 
heap of blankets stirred and rattled, from the 
heap an arm flung out white bones, a skull rolled 
to the feet of the spectators, then the blankets 
were flung aside and an Indian youth, com- 
pletely nude, but painted white and marked with 
ritual signs, leapt from the pile. 



INCENSE AND OCCULTISM 137 

i l Eising to his full height he donned a tower- 
ing feather headdress of humming bird and 
quetzal feathers which gleamed like a myriad 
jewels in the torchlight. 

" Three times the spectators claimed him as 
the risen God, then the drums broke out into a 
violent triumphant dance in an infectious meas- 
ure in which both dancers and spectators 
joined. 

"In the meantime a cloth or canvas housing 
had been drawn over the roofless temple "by 
minor priests. The brazier was carried inside, 
and suddenly the Boy God, leaving the dancers, 
ascended the steps and entered the prepared 
pavilion. 

"As suddenly the drums fell silent and the 
shrill pipes alone kept up the eerie tune. 

"My friend touched. me on the shoulder, the 
seated elders rose, and, following the high 
priest, we made our way into the sanctuary. 

"Banging ourselves along the walls we sat 
down in an open square. In the centre was the 
youth stretched on a skin-covered native bed- 
stead, at its head the brazier. 

"Swiftly the door was sealed with skin mats ; 



138 A MODEKN OCCULTIST 

then to the accompaniment of a muttered ritual 
and much raising and lowering of skull-tipped 
wands, the priest cast herbs into the brazier. 
The heavy smoke wreathed about in the close 
room and a sense of languor fell upon me. 

' ' Right and left I could hear the elders inhal- 
ing the vapour, then one after another they suc- 
cumbed to its influence. Then came an invoca- 
tion to the spirits, and the old men began to 
talk to spirits that they alone could see among 
the hazy, drug-laden smoke of the lodge. 

"As if inspired, the boy uttered oracular wis- 
dom, now answering questions put to him, now 
declaiming what he had heard the spirits say. 
Slowly the drug gained in its effect over me. 
The painted leather screens on the rude walls 
became instinct with life, the crude stone carv- 
ing seemed alive and writhing, and all the air 
seemed charged with flashing processions of 
colours and sonorous music. 

" I must have been overcome by the fumes, 
for I remember nothing more till I came to in 
the dawn-light in one of the terraces outside the 
building. They gave me a calabash of herb- 
scented goat's milk to drink, and in a moment or 



INCENSE AND OCCULTISM 139 

two my brain cleared. ... I made it my in- 
terest to get some of the marihuana herb, which 
I send you. ' ' 

Analysis of the marihuana revealed that it 
contained about twenty-five per cent, admixture 
of other herbs in addition to the main base of 
cannabis arnericana. A gum or sap exudation 
of an aromatic nature served to bind the mass 
together. 

A personal experiment carried out with a 
small portion of the mixture proved that iden- 
tical hallucinatory results could be induced by 
its use in a London room as well as on the top 
of a Guatemalan Tescalli. Of a party of four, 
three saw colour visions, two heard music, and 
one described figures of Mazan mythology with 
some exactness. As, however, we all know the 
origin of the incense and its connection, these 
latter visions may be more properly ascribed 
to suggestion than held to have objective exist- 
ence as spirit phenomena. 

There is reason to believe that other plants, 
and possibly some synthetic products, have the 
same peculiar properties of the liberation of 
the " psyche." In the same way, although con- 



140 A MODEEN OCCULTIST 

sumption as a draught or as an inhaled smoke 
veiled by incense are the ritual ways of achiev- 
ing a physiological result, the same might be 
achieved by spraying a solution into the air, by 
absorption through the skin (this may have 
been the r arson d'etre of some " witch oint- 
ments "), or by hypodermic injection. 

Needless to say, any attempt to experiment 
in these matters is extremely unwise and dan- 
gerous. 



CHAPTER VIII 

BEASTS AND ELEMENTALS 

The apparitions customarily seen by those who 
are clairvoyant or psychic are those that take 
human form. 

In many cases they represent known humans 
who have passed over, but sometimes we are 
brought into contact with non-human appari- 
tions. 

These may be semi-human or demoniac 
forms, they may be animal forms, or they may 
be simply manifestations of elemental forces. 
Discarding the trumpery attempts at classifi- 
cation that have been advanced by one or 
twa writers of so-called " ghost stories,' ' 
it must be recognized that the occultist is 
faced with problems that cannot be readily 
reduced or explained by any logical hy- 
pothesis. 

The Spiritualist approaches the question ac- 
cording to set theories. " Spirits,' ' says he, 

141 



142 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

"can do anything. They take what shape they 
will. Why they do so is a mystery." 

The woman Spiritualist is usually as open to 
believe that the spirit of her beloved Pekingese 
or Pomeranian can return in astral form, and 
ascribes it to the influences of love. "Love me, 
love my dog," appears to furnish as good an 
explanation of animal manifestation as any. 

On the other hand, when you get some abso- 
lutely extraordinary manifestations such as the 
seal that appeared to Sir Garnet Wolseley,* or 
the materialization of vampire bats, partially 
developed monkeys or a full-sized goat, — and I 
have known all these to occur, — then the love 
theory falls down badly, and we must seek a 
more reasonable explanation. 

If we accept the idea of discarnate spirit in- 
telligences we certainly should not accept them 
all at face value as good. The bulk of humanity 
that has passed over has not been good, or for 
the matter of that, Christian. 

Assuming that these spirits were human, but 
took bestial form for purposes of their own, we 



* Mr. Gambier Bolton, who was present, assures me of the 
reality of this inexplicable incident. 



BEASTS AND ELEMENTALS 143 

may find some glimmerings of support for a 
new theory when we realize that in the past and 
in the present idolatry prevails. The idols of 
savages are usually totemistic. And they held 
that the identity of soul persisted after death, 
not in a new human existence but as a rebirth 
in animal form. 

To a large extent, totemistic paganism was 
mixed up with licentious and bestial festivals, 
useful in assuring the continuance and multi- 
plication of a savage tribe, but evolving prac- 
tices repugnant to Western ethics. 

The beasts that come back — are beastly. The 
ghost dog that scratches and paws and leaps 
into its mistress's lap is a very different thing 
to that which it pretends to be. When we reach 
the foulness of the goat or bat manifestations 
we feel with no shadow of doubt that we are 
in touch with the unmasked spirits of evil. Not 
only visible form, but touch and smell are pres- 
ent. We are brought into distinct contact with 
the sardonic mocking terror that lies on the 
other side of life. 

The border between the brutal and blood- 
lusting savage and the demon, is a slender one. 



144 A MODEEN OCCULTIST 

The conception of a singularly evil earth-bound 
negro spirit who has believed in an after-life 
in which his soul will inhabit the body of an 
ape or a leopard, comes very close to the ac- 
cepted idea of a devil or demon. 

"We get something of the same basic con- 
ception in the idea of the wer-wolf or vampire, 
and there is a singular reinforcement of this 
theory in that in the Dark Ages when paganism 
was yielding reluctantly to the inroads of the 
Christian faith, the early fathers explicitly 
identified such animal manifestations witn the 
sorcery of paganism. The fantastic gargoyles 
that ornament cathedrals are simply tradition- 
alizations of that period when these beast in- 
carnations in all their devilishness contended 
against the spread of a purer faith. 

Sometimes it chances that we, in this twen- 
tieth century, by accident open a door through 
which a tenth-century devil can creep in. 

Other occultists, notably those of the Vien- 
nese school, hold that the beast manifestations 
are not forms or shapes assumed by evil spirits 
that have been mortal, but are, as it were, living 
evil thought-forms, and are the incarnation of 



BEASTS AND ELEMENTALS 145 

dead and evil cults on which a great deal of 
human thought-energy had been expended dur- 
ing some time in the worlds history. 

Proof is not possible, and it is not yet the 
time to marshal the facts which would seem to 
indicate that a dead cultus can yet live on, sup- 
ported, as it were, by the emotional sin of the 
present-day world, although the sin is divorced 
from its old ritual significance. This theory of 
the continuation of the sacrificial value of sin 
is of course one of the most serious aspects of 
the art of sorcery. Propitiation and symbolism 
are often linked up in a way that perplexes the 
most agile-witted student of the occult, and it 
may well be that certain seemingly innocent 
ritual acts have contributed their quota to the 
maintenance of life in certain forgotten cults — 
whose entities come suddenly into being again 
in a most alarming manner. 

To the occultist who thinks this matter out, 
the identity of beast materializations with in- 
carnate prototypes of sin will probably be 
manifest. 

As it is, the essential quality of the evil that 
these entities typify and attempt to induce does 



146 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

not become apparent from a chance unsought 
materialization, but the medium who sees 
" animals' ' is suspect. 

Repeated evocations of these entities lead to 
disaster. The beast becomes an obsession and 
is to all intents and purposes the old "familiar' ' 
of the days of witchcraft. 

For reasons which are hinted at above, but 
which cannot be more fully expounded in a 
book of this nature, the beast materialization is 
a phenomenon which should be avoided at all 
costs. If such occurs at a seance, break off the 
sitting at once. If these phenomena appear to 
be connected with any particular medium, there 
are the gravest reasons for seeking another 
sensitive. Above all things, avoid people who 
claim that the spirits of pet animals have come 
back to them. 

The cynic may contend that it is folly to be 
afraid of the spirits of poor dumb animals and 
yet invite communication with the mortal dead. 
The occultist and the mystic who know some- 
thing of the mysteries will, however, see the 
reasons. To-day, when thousands are inter- 
ested in psychical matters, knowledge has been 



BEASTS AND ELEMENTALS 147 

forgotten or trampled underfoot. The well- 
meaning, loud-voiced blind lead myriads to a 
new heaven, acclaiming hell vanquished because 
in their rapturous exultation over new discov- 
eries of old things they have forgotten the ab- 
solute rule of balance. Positive and Negative, 
Good and Bad, Strong and Weak, Plus or 
Minus. 

There is balance in all things, and this sud- 
den acclamation of the Unseen World as all 
good, all easy, and quite safe, is perfectly 
ridiculous. 

Occultism is not either good, safe, nor amus- 
ing for the vast majority of people. Spiritual- 
ism as generally practised is a kind of benefi- 
cent bobbing into the Tom Tiddler's ground of 
the Unseen. There is a pleasing conceit that if 
the Powers of Evil turn up it will be enough to 
utter a Protestant prayer and say that because 
you are "good" a bogy can't touch you. 

This is a rather childish way of treating the 
Powers — in point of fact, it does not work, it 
is very much like saying that lightning cannot 
strike you because you have rubber heels to 
your boots. 



148 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

It is a melancholy reflection that the very 
people who go about reading little handbooks 
on " Knowledge is Power,' ' never realize that 
it is the right use of knowledge that means 
Power and that sometimes the coming of Power 
without knowledge spells catastrophe for all 
concerned. 

Besides the dangerous and perplexing beast 
manifestations, there is a third class of phe- 
nomenon which is manifestly neither human nor 
animal, but bears a close relationship to Ele- 
mental Forces such as Fire, Air, or Water. 
These phenomena are the only ones properly 
described as due to elementals, but a certain 
confusion has arisen through the use of this 
word as applied to all spirit phenomena which 
were not broadly classifiable as human. 

Ghosts, giant appearances, and ferocious and 
evil spirits of all kinds have been described as 
elementals, so that the word has lost its real 
precision. Originally all these outside spirits 
not known as the souls of mortals were classed 
as being spirits of Earth or Fire, Air, or Water, 
and by this arbitrary relation to the elements 
became known as Elementals. 



BEASTS AND ELEMENTALS 149 

In effect only phenomena where no apparent 
organic or physical materialization or incarna-* 
tion of any kind occurs should be classified as 
purely elemental. 

Of these the heat elemental is a phenomenon 
that is occasionally observed. Air or wind phe- 
nomena are also known, but I know of no case 
where earth or water phenomena apart from 
" apports " by a materialized presence claim- 
ing to be an earth or water elemental, have been 
noted. To my mind the organic presence de- 
stroys the evidential value of the latter ac- 
counts due to the effect of elementals as distinct 
from spirits. 

The elementals are properly those intelli- 
gences (the word spirits conveys a wrong im- 
plication) that are termed in the old rituals the 
Powers of Fire, Air, Earth, and Water. In 
magic it was held that these Powers were 
served by spirits, but there is reason to sup- 
pose that this view rose from the too literal in- 
terpretation of the old rituals and maltrans- 
lation of the occult "Grimoires" of the fifteenth 
and sixteenth centuries. 

The appearance of these elementals is rare 



150 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

and sporadic, usually associated with a place 
or an individual rather than with the sitting of 
a seance. 

Sometimes the individual afflicted by the ele- 
mental is affected in a negative manner — that 
is to say, he is immune to the effect of fire or 
heat or has the power of inducing enormous 
draughts and air disturbances in confined space 
without knowing why. 

These cases are difficult, and though a " fire- 
proof " medium who can carry live coals in his 
hand may claim it to be due to the effect of a 
fire-elemental control, it must be remembered 
that in many cases autosuggestion will induce 
an extension of the protective ecto- or psycho- 
plasm which is equally effective.* The South 
Sea and Indian fanatics who walk across red- 
hot stones indubitably possess this self-con- 
tained power. 

I have only a secondhand instance of a 
pure heat elemental to relate. This was com- 
municated to me by a very well-known 



* The really genuine fire medium can hold a red-hot coal 
or glowing asbestos from the gas fire on the palm of the hand 
for two minutes. No shorter duration of time should be 
accepted. 



BEASTS AND ELEMENTALS 151 

mountain painter whom we will call Calvin 
Muir. 

He had been down in the Welsh Marches 
where the low foothills of the mountains just 
change into stretches of rocky moors above the 
low-lying wooded valleys. 

Muir was by habit and training a keen ob- 
server. He was also a Frater of the Bosicru- 
cian Society and had a wide general knowledge 
of many strange aspects of occultism. 

"I was staying down at Pwhyll-gor, a little 
hill village with a few cottages and two inns of 
small attractiveness/' said he. " I had been 
there some six weeks or so, sketching and wan- 
dering and doing a little trout fishing when the 
mood took me. One evening I found the tap- 
room learnedly discussing the blight that was 
affecting an orchard in a nearby farm. 

" According to them, half the affected trees 
appeared burnt or seared and there was great 
discussion whether lightning could strike with- 
out a concurrent storm or thunderclap. 

"Others held that it was probably a mischiev- 
ous trick by small boys, but one old man de- 
clared it had happened before in the same dis- 



152 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

trict in his father's time and that it was due to 
"owl blasting. ' 

"This, it seemed, was a form of witchcraft 
or magic, but more closely related to the malevo- 
lent forces of nature than to mortal ill will. 
He was not communicative, but disclosed 
enough to make me determine to visit the farm 
next day. 

"I found it up on the hillside in a little 
natural valley or gap where a few fertile 
acres had been reclaimed. It was a poor 
enough small homestead, bleak and barren, and 
the wretched little orchard was poor enough 
in all conscience without suffering supernatural 
violences. 

"The farmer's wife received me and made no 
secret of her troubles. Together we went out 
to view the damage, and I found two cider- 
apple trees whose foliage and fruit had been 
literally burnt in an area as large as a good- 
sized cart wheel. 

"That was the queer thing about it, the close 
circular or rather spherical limits of the 
damage. It was just as if a red-hot round bite 
had been taken out of the thick of the tree, and 



BEASTS AND ELEMENTALS 153 

left the neighbour twigs and leaves unsinged — 
unseared. 

"They had no explanation to offer except 
lightning, and it was manifest they had no real 
belief in that. I suggested boys, but was told 
there was but one about the farm — even as I 
made the suggestion I knew it was futile; but 
what would you? 

"I asked when the calamity occurred, and 
they told me in full daytime between dawn and 
lunch. In the morning all had been well in the 
orchard — by noon two trees half ruined, and 
no one had seen sight of smoke or flame, nor 
sound. 

"The suggestion of 'owl blasting ' brought 
no response. They were strangers to the coun- 
try, having come some ten years ago from 
Swansea way. 

" 'It's the hills,' said the woman. 

" 'Well,' said I, 'another watcher will do no 
harm. Can you give me a shakedown, and to- 
morrow I will go out with my easel and stay 
sketching the orchard. ' 

"She assented without enthusiasm, and I 
spent that night at the farm. 



154 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

"The farmer was no wiser and rather surlier 
than his wife, but both were manifestly op- 
pressed with fear. Their boy alone was cheer- 
ful and unmoved. 

"The next day I rose at cock-crow, passed 
through the orchard and out on to the hills to 
a patch of rock and heather some two hundred 
yards away. 

"By seven o'clock I had watched in a good 
stretch of the farm and the orchard in which not 
a soul had moved. All at once, I stood with 
my brush poised in amazement, as there high 
above the trees w T as poised a small, blue-yellow 
lambent flame that seemed to drift sideways in 
the windless air. 

"For a moment I thought it was a fire bal- 
loon, then saw my error. "Without a thought I 
ran toward it just in time to see it settle down 
on to a tree whose leaves in a moment turned 
from green to darkening brown and burst 
almost immediately into crackling flame. My 
cries brought out the boy and the woman from 
the house and on their coming it vanished and 
we were left gazing at the damage it had done. 

1 ' I told them what I had seen, and the woman 



BEASTS AND ELEMENTALS 155 

suddenly put her apron over her face and burst 
into tears. We sent the boy to fetch her hus- 
band, who came in a marked state of worry and 
agitation. 

"I could not follow the quick interchange of 
Welsh words that ensued. The man then asked 
me who had told me of 'owl blasting,' and to- 
gether we went to the village to find the old 
man. 

"It appeared that a month or so back the 
farmer had used some old rocks which were 
part of the ring of a Cromlech to rebuild one 
of his stone walls. This, according to the old 
man, had brought down the 'owl blasting' upon 
him. 

"Painstakingly they dragged the stones back 
to their original place, and I believe certain 
ceremonial was gone through at the next quar- 
ter of the moon. 

"The precise things done were kept secret 
from me, for I was a stranger and suspect, but 
I gathered enough to understand that a mer- 
cenary destruction or disturbance of Druidic 
remains brought its own reward. 

"All that I can say is that a ball of fire came 



156 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

out of clear sky quite slowly and destroyed 
part of the foliage of an apple tree under 
conditions precluding any human agency." 

The above is Calvin Muir's account. To an 
occultist the connection between the Power of 
Fire and the violation of a Cromlech is con- 
vincing, but it is difficult to conceive in what 
manner the Powers were propitiated. 

Scientific people have suggested slow-drying 
phosphorus solution as an explanation of an 
apparently supernatural occurrence. Muir, on 
the other hand, was positive that it was a true 
manifestation of a fire elemental, and that the 
old man who knew about "owl blasting' * was 
not an interested or malevolent party in a peas- 
ant's plot. 

So far, no hypothesis that will serve as a ra- 
tional explanation of all the facts has ever been 
advanced. 



OHAPTEE IX 

POSSESSION 

[From time to time we come across cases of 
3emoniacal possession. In these there is ap- 
parently the permanent or temporary domina- 
tion of the soul or mind of the victim by an evil 
spirit or demon of alien personality. 

Cases of possession are invariably claimed as 
"proofs" of the existence of spirit intelligence, 
and in cases where the possession is nominally 
at least a mild one the possessed are sometimes 
quite proud of it. It is, in fact, exhibited 
as quaint and dreadful deformity would be — 
the phrase is exact. It is a mental de- 
formity. 

Now, it must be understood that the psycholo- 
gists have of late years made enormous strides 
in their knowledge of the vagaries of the sub- 
conscious mind. Possession, like ' ' shell shock, ' ' 
is in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred a per- 
fectly curable disease. It springs from a per- 

/ 157 



158 A MODEEN OCCULTIST 

version of the subconscious state, can be diag- 
nosed by psychoanalysis and eradicated by 
transference or by suggestion. 

The processes of Christian exorcism often 
attained the same result. The wise priest was 
able to "cast out demons," and medical science 
of to-day, working by analytical methods rather 
than by rule of thumb, achieves the same 
results. 

Whether one accepts the scientific theory that 
these "possessions' ' are but multiple personali- 
ties and that there may be several mental per- 
sonalities in the one mind, or whether one be- 
lives the idea of spirit influence, does not much 
matter. In any case the doors of the mind can 
be firmly locked on either spirit or mental dis- 
?ase. Possession is curable — if the patient 
really desires to be cured. 

Possession can be readily evoked in nearly all 
hypnotic subjects. Not only one but several 
distinct personalities can be developed by the 
psychologist. Janet's experiments developed 
in Madame B. three separate individuals: 
Leonie, known in the waking state as a "pos- 
sessor"; Leontine under the light stage of 



POSSESSION 159 

hypnosis, and Leonore in a deeper condition.* 
Even a popular knowledge and comprehen- 
sion of this peculiar disease of the subconscious 
is difficult to attain without a sound elementary 
grasp of the principles of psychology. The bulk 
of books on the subject are written for the 
medical or scientific mind, but Coriat's book 
is a sound and easily grasped introductory 
manual.f 

The normal form of mental trouble is an ob- 
session, the fear or "phobia" of some perfectly 
normal thing, a desire to touch objects. There 
are dozens of variations of these obsessions 
which spring to mind. The state of possession 
can only be said to exist when the mind is under 
the dominance of another individuality distinct 
from the normal personality. 

It is curious to note that cases of possession 
by good spirits are absolutely unknown. A 
medium may be " controlled' ' by spirits said to 
be good, but this does not amount to a pos- 
session. In every case where normal person- 
ality has been overthrown and another or 



* Pierre Janet: L'automatisme Psychologique. 
^Abnormal Psychology. Isador H. Coriat. Rider, 1911. 



160 A MODEEN OCCULTIST 

other personalities take possession we find-^ 
evil. 

This is to certain extent explicable if we 
realize that every thought or wish that occurs 
to us, and which we repress because it is bad 
or evil, is not destroyed or wiped out of exist- 
ence, but stays as a suppressed desire or wish 
buried in the recesses of subconscious mind. 

When normal conscious control is over- 
thrown, these subconsciously stored desires or 
wishes come bubbling up — a fact that seems to 
explain why the language used by nicely 
brought up girls recovering after the adminis- 
tration of an anaesthetic would put a coal-heaver 
to flight. 

In the dream-state, too, these repressed de^ 
sires escape all mixed up from their bondage, a 
fact which accounts for the peculiar medley of 
dreams and their frequent lack of moral bal- 
ance and accentuation of sexual characteristics. 

The character of a " possessing' ' demon is in 
most cases determined by experiences that the 
victim has passed through. Shock, neuras- 
thenia, illness, disappointment; all these may 
bring about the splitting of the personality so 



POSSESSION 161 

that the secondary or possessing personality 
can overthrow consciousness and take charge. 

The victim is often horrified to find his or her 
mind continually filled with terrible desires, in- 
tolerable passions, and thoughts utterly repug- 
nant to the sedate conscious self. 

Sometimes the idea of possession is stimu- 
lated by messages received through mediums or 
by automatic writing— this is one of the many 
frequent cases where undigested, uneducated 
Spiritualism is often abominably [harmful. 
Anything that helps the idea of possession to 
grow in the afflicted mind should be avoided. 

Gradually the nature of the possession be- 
comes more acutely defined and is recognized as 
a different personality — an evil personality 
resident in the same body using the same mind. 
It is in all human probability only the re- 
pressed wishes — all the pent-up unfulfilled evil 
of a lifetime taking shape and urging gratifica- 
tion rather than repression in a new and secon- 
dary personality. 

Possession by evil spirits is invariably con- 
nected with violence and vice. Sometimes the 
attacks are periodic; always they are signs of 



162 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

mental instability and psychic disease. A pos- 
sessed person is a fit subject for psychothera- 
peutic treatment by" qualified medical men, but 
a source of very real psychic danger in a 
seance or as a subject for well-meaning experi- 
ments in faith healing by amateurs. 

In psychic healing the doctrine of sacrifice 
and the scapegoat had a very literal interpreta- 
tion. The healer often takes upon his own soul 
the burden that he lifts from another. This 
psychic transference can only be done in safety 
by certain and specific ways beyond the scope 
of this work. It is sufficient to indicate the 
danger. 

Possession in its varying aspects has given 
rise to many myths and legends. Larva?, In- 
cubi, and Succubi were all demons of temporary 
possession that tempted man. In the Middle 
Ages and far later the Faith strove lustily with 
them, and where exorcism failed the stake was 
found effective. 

According to the older writers, Incubi were 
male demons who possessed the bodies of mor- 
tal women; Succubi, she-devils who seduced the 
souls and possessed the bodies of men. 



POSSESSION 163 

Sorcerers had the power of despatching these 
erotic demons to gratify their associates or 
plague their enemies, and it is notable that this 
doctrine of vicarious enjoyment or satisfaction 
reappears in the Spiritualist belief in gross and 
earth-bound souls of sinners who haunt drink- 
ing booths and houses of ill-fame, deriving vi- 
carious satisfaction from the sins of the living. 

The old demonographers give lurid and dis- 
gustful accounts of these "possessions"* and 
insist on their contagious nature. Prosecutions 
for sorcery, "possession," and similar crimes 
raged throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries, and in the pages of the records we 
can trace the Incubi and Succubi now hidden as 
familiar spirits, now described as the devil 
himself, but curiously true in their nature to 
the occasional demoniac possessions that 
trouble the twentieth century. 

Even if one admits that the average "pos- 
session" is one's own evil subconscious person- 
ality attempting to overthrow the conscious 
mind, certain questions and possibilities arise. 



* See Tableau de L'lnconstance des DSmons. Pierre de 
Lancre. 



164 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

That the astral body or mind can make dis- 
carnate journeys is a well-known fact to all 
Spiritualists. There is, then, no reason to sup- 
pose that this faculty would be less material in 
a possessive personality whose origin was spe- 
cifically in the dream realm of the subconscious. 

Indeed, it is far more plausible to suppose 
that the possessor or demon mind would find it 
far easier to make the journey than the other 
personality, for it is recognized that the re- 
lease of the actual body occurs in trance or 
dream state. 

We have here, then, some possible psychic 
explanation of many of the cases of sorcery 
where the complaint of the sufferers was that 
they were victimized during sleep by demons. 
In other words, they were the recipients of un- 
desired attentions by the astral body of either 
the sorcerer or his followers or associates. 

This has been suggested to me in various 
forms by people who have believed themselves 
the victims of discarnate spirits — and who were 
at times possessed by them against their wills. 
It must, however, be admitted that in all such 
cases which came under my notice there had 



POSSESSION 165 

been connection with Spiritualist circles or with 
minor forms of occultism, and it was impossible 
to exclude the possibility of previous hypnosis, 
autosuggestion, or the little known but com- 
mon phenomena of psychic invasion— by other 
members of the circle. 

Viewed from the psychical point of view, pos- 
session is an extremely difficult problem* Real 
spirit possession might occur, suggestion or 
psychic invasion is often indicated; and, as I 
have explained, multiple personality and the 
concentration of evil repressed desires in the 
secondary individuality furnishes a complete 
scientific explanation of the phenomenon. 

These cases must be taken individually, and 
there are not yet grounds for laying down a 
general explanation of all the phenomena. One 
of the great difficulties is the natural reluctance 
of the victims to disclose exact details, but no 
case of possession which was not either openly 
or secretly erotic is known to be recorded. 

Possessions fall under two heads: those in 
which the possessing spirit urges the victim to 
the commission of injurious acts in person, and 
thereby derives direct satisfaction through the 



166 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

body; and those in which a vicarious satisfac- 
tion is achieved through the astral body. The 
possibility of intercourse between spirit and 
mortal has been held to be a possibility since 
Biblical times, and the expulsion of the fallen 
angels was due to this sin.* 

Stainton Moses held that much of the lower 
phenomena was caused by spirits who had not 
yet reached man's plane of intelligence, just as 
sonie was produced by others who had pro- 
ceeded further and returned to enlighten man.f 
This belief occurs in folklore, in Oriental re- 
ligions, and in a myriad variations. 

The djinn of the Arabian Nights is a very 
real thing to the modern native, and a consider- 
able literature exists in which the intercourse 
between djinn and mortal is the main theme. 
In the same way the belief in fairy wives or 
husbands is not so long dead in Europe and 
alive to-day among the hill tribes of the Pamirs. 

The whole theory of spirit possession or 
demon possession is linked with this idea. In 
the "possessed" state the victim is unconscious 



*Jude VI, 7. 

t Stainton Moses, Spirit Identity, Appendix II. 



POSSESSION 167 

of deeds done and words said. The blame is 
the blame of the demon. 

In nine cases out of ten frenzy or hysteria 
accompanies nominal possession. There are 
gifts of strange tongues usually said to be 
Eastern or Indian, and the possessed pour out 
streams of gibberish in which a few dominant 
words or phrases bearing a slight resemblance 
to some known tongue may be distinguished. 

Clairvoyance, the gift of prophecy, and other 
psychic qualities appear at the time of the seiz- 
ure. Often there is marked anaesthesia and in- 
sensitiveness to pain. Hot objects may be 
handled with impunity, electric shocks are not 
felt. 

These cases are not genuine cases of posses- 
sion in its worst sense when they begin, but 
very frequently the victim is urged by fools to 
develop these wonderful powers and the Darker 
Powers accept the invitation and step in. 

The occultist and the scientist agree about 
very few things, but both agree that possession 
and surrender to possession are the first steps 
to moral and physical disaster. The transfer- 
able or infectious quality of possession is not so 



168 A MODEEN OCCULTIST 

widely known as it should be, but with the in- 
crease of Spiritualism its effects will in a year 
or so become capable of perception by even the 
most unenlightened. 

A girl of my acquaintance, the daughter of 
wealthy and respectable Midland parents, be- 
came interested in psychic matters. Her faith 
was greater than her powers of discernment 
and she was, like all too many Spiritualists, of 
neurotic and hysterical temperament. 

Her first actual essays were with automatic 
writing; then as she was an art student she 
tried painting under spirit control. Some 
slight success attended her efforts and she be- 
came interested in Egyptian mythology because 
her spirit paintings were Egyptian in character. 

I did not see her frequently, but met her about 
a year after she had taken up! her Egyptian 
studies. She stated that in her was reincar- 
nated the soul of an Egyptian priest. This in- 
vading entity dominated her entire mind and 
mode of life. 

Before, she had been a healthy, normal girl 
although inclined to be neurotic, but once given 
over to this obsession she found that owing to 



POSSESSION 169 

the psychic change of sex all men were repug- 
nant to her. She was possessed by a male mind 
in a female body, and with this extraordinary 
inversion of normal feelings was obliged to 
break off her engagement. 

The remainder of her life was short but 
tragic. Her automatic writings (which were 
destroyed after her unhappy death at her own 
hands) showed the ascendancy of the possess- 
ing demon as it grew over her. Interspersed 
with these records were the tragic outpourings 
of her soul, her self-analysis of her psychic 
disaster. There were things there terrible to 
read. 

It is not perhaps fair to blame psychic science 
for disastrous tragedies such as these, but it 
must be openly admitted that occultism is not 
for the multitude. 

There is nothing known to-day that was not 
known in the past, but Spiritualists and other 
investigators have discovered a few of the 
minor marvels that were known to, but wisely 
hidden by, the ancients. Sometimes they are 
like children playing with a box of drugs, some 
of which are active poisons. 



170 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

One message of consolation, one instance of 
subconscious telepathy with a medium, and they 
are convinced of the truth of Spiritualism and 
will not be warned that whatever truth it may 
hold it also holds Untruth and Danger as well 
as Hope. 

The threshold between the innocent "con- 
trol" and the malevolent "demons of posses- 
sion" is a very, very narrow one. Sometimes, 
indeed often, there is no dividing line at all. 
The charges that Spiritualism is the high road 
to lunacy have these unfortunate occurrences 
as their basis. 



CHAPTER X 

SOME NEW FACTS AND THEORIES 

There are a number of peculiar phenomena that 
come under no specific head or grouping at 
present; that is to say^ they are infrequent or 
isolated instances which cannot yet be relegated 
to a specific class and labelled. 

I have frequently come across hearsay evi- 
dence and been unable to find the original ob- 
server. In other cases the character or men- 
tality of the observer has been such as to 
render the account entirely valueless from 
any point of view except that of sensa- 
tionalism. 

The result is that we are faced with an un- 
usual case which remains mysterious, usually 
because opportunity for a thorough examina- 
tion of the phenomena is lacking. 

This is perhaps best illustrated by those cases 
of material phenomena which we class as 
Poltergeists. 

171 



172 A MODEBN OCCULTIST 

The most recently recorded case was the 
Cheriton dugout,* but there are many others 
recorded and a good many more details of which 
have been suppressed for personal or economic 
reasons. 

Eonald Grey has some interesting notes 
under this heading to which I will now turn. 

The distinguishing characteristics of a pol- 
tergeist haunting are aimless violence and mis- 
chief accompanied by the displacement and 
turning about of material objects and unaccom- 
panied by any visible materialization of the 
manifesting entity. 

In many cases these mischievous phenomena 
are associated directly or indirectly with chil- 
dren or young persons. Sceptics usually at- 
tribute the phenomena to pure mischief and a 
desire to mystify or be revenged on somebody 
by the child, but I do not hold that this is the 
true interpretation. 

The actual power of physical mediumship is 
a gift which is in some strange way connected 
with physiological conditions. It is often more 
marked in ill-health than when well and some- 

* See The New Revelation. Sir A. C. Doyle. 



SOME NEW FACTS AND THEORIES 173 

times vanishes completely or may return again 
after a year or two. 

It has now been ascertained that the site of 
the haunting is the functioning factor and that 
one or other of the humans present is the often 
unconscious medium. If a known physical 
medium is substituted for the original one the 
phenomena will often be as effectively repro- 
duced. The doctrine held by Spiritualists that 
a poltergeist is a low type of spirit essentially 
non-human and akin to the tree dryads or earth 
or air elementals does not seem to be borne out 
in practice. 

Just as many people hold that the bulk of 
harmless as distinct from malignant appari- 
tions are " thought-impressions ' ' on the sur- 
rounding walls which become visible to people 
with the gift of clairvoyance, so are there some 
grounds for believing that the poltergeist mani- 
festations are due not to any directing intelli- 
gence at all but to the permanence of some old 
act or thought which still has in some cases the 
power of influencing matter. 

Mind cannot affect matter without the in- 
fluence of a human intermediary. But the 



174 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

physical medium is a human intermediary and 
serves as a dynamo or battery for the genera- 
tion of a necessary force. 

Just as table levitations and similar phe- 
nomena are produced by the extrusion of psy- 
chical rods or levers which are invisible,* but 
which are directed to a definite task by intelli- 
gence, so the poltergeist phenomena seem to be 
similar phenomena but without any directing 
intelligence. 

This statement needs qualification in the cases 
where the child medium has become partly 
aware that in some strange way he or she is 
the prime motor for the phenomena. Then the 
child's mind consciously or subconsciously di- 
recting the impulse may focus the manifestation 
in the way of impish, malicious tricks afflicting 
an individual. 

The " psyche force' ' or psychoplasm extended 
by the medium is very closely akin to what is 
termed " animal magnetism' ' — it seems to be of 
nervous origin and physiologically connected 
with internal secretory organs. 

* For details of leverage, etc., see: The Reality of Psychic 
Phenomena and Experiments in Psychical Science. By W. T. 
Crawford. 



SOME NEW FACTS AND THEORIES 175 

A slight nervous derangement of one of the 
many complexes associated with the age of 
puberty may quite conceivably endow occasional 
children with a transient power of physical 
mediumship. 

The next point is the accumulatory effect of 
surroundings. Here we are very much in the 
dark, but the manifestations do not occur un- 
less physical limits, such as walls, are present. 
In a poltergeisted house two unconscious agents 
of the activities may, particularly while asleep, 
but also while awake, saturate the surroundings 
with this peculiar form of energy. 

There is nothing to show that this vitality 
ceases with death; it certainly continues dur- 
ing the state of sleep, and if it is borne in mind 
that even when the soul has passed from the 
body after death, life — that is to say, intense 
bacterial activity — continues, it is conceivable 
that the continued extension of this force may 
continue from unascertained physiological con- 
ditions, and so explain some of the baffling and' 
distressing phenomena that have occurred in 
vaults and given rise to the theory of bodies 
being buried alive in a cataleptic condition. 



176 A MODEBN OCCULTIST 

More advanced students will see in the fore- 
going hypothesis the explanation of certain ob- 
scure texts relative to the Egyptian processes 
of embalming, and other religious rituals in 
connection with the disposal of corpses. The 
ancients were keenly aware of certain mon- 
strous after-death possibilities which the mod- 
erns ignore. 

This, then, is where the theory of poltergeist 
manifestations splits. They are often trace- 
able to 

(a) Unconscious physical mediums, usually 

adolescents. 
[(b) In certain difficult cases the human ele- 
ment has been eliminated, and the only 
hypothesis is the sudden manifestation 
of a latent force derived from the dead. 
It should be remembered that the graves of 
saints become shrines and that miracles are at- 
tributed to them, and that certain most terrible 
vampire phenomena are associated with some 
unsanctified graves. 

Just as the hair and nails of some corpses 
continue to grow to extravagant lengths long 
after death, so in certain cases it seems as if 



SOME NEW FACTS AND THEOEIES 177 

the corruption of the flesh were accompanied 
by a translation of the residual vital force or 
nervous energy — as distinct from soul or con- 
sciousness — into free psychic power. 

This energy can apparently be stored in mat- 
ter such as walls, wood, etc., and seems to have 
the quality of remaining latent until some un- 
known cause begins to change it from a static 
to a " dynamic" condition. 

The sorcerer who produces earth from a par- 
ticular grave and who treasures unholy mortal 
relics of evil man, is practising more than a 
mere symbolism. He is using matter whose 
very body may be impregnated with that pe- 
culiar essence or force which is the vehicle of 
all psychic phenomena. 

People who are interested in serving the 
Powers of Evil have sedulously propagated the 
idea that, however malignant astral powers may 
be, there is a law that they cannot harm or in- 
jure mortals. This is one of those dangerous 
statements that Spiritualists make use of with- 
out knowing what they are talking about. These 
powers can be and often have been applied to 
the most sinister purposes. Utilized by anyone 



178 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

with occult knowledge and experience they are 
pregnant with soul- and body-destroying capaci- 
ties, and it is fair to say that certain other 
occult powers are the least defence against 
them. 

I am inclined to favour the theory that in all 
cases of poltergeists, where non-human sources 
of power are indicated, careful psychic analysis 
will reveal some inanimate matter which has 
been in contact with either evil-living mortality 
or the dead, and is serving as the focus and 
reservoir of the force. The power appears to 
be sporadic and cumulative, but it can be de- 
stroyed or dissipated both by material and 
by occult means if it can be traced to its 
source. 

The latent cumulative effect of such an evil 
relic may possibly stimulate the extension of 
psychoplasm by unconscious mediums brought 
within its sphere of influence. This seems indi- 
cated where an exchange of physical mediums 
in the one centre of inflection has produced 
parallel results. There is also some ground 
for supposing that the phases of the moon af- 
fect the manifestation. 



SOME NEW FACTS AND THEOKIES 179 

It is, of course, fashionable to deride the 
moon, but any seaside doctor will admit that 
his patients die with the ebb of the tide ; and, 
further, it is highly illogical to suppose that an 
influence which can affect the vast masses of the 
tides is without its influence on the tenuous 
fluids of vitality. 

The lunar effect is probably due to a screen- 
ing or projection of specific solar or ethereal 
vibrations below the range which we see . as 
light and colour and above that which we recog- 
nize as electrical phenomena. 

"The simple undirected energy display of a 
poltergeist phenomenon may be converted into 
a specifically malignant phenomenon. The 
energy may be used to form a vehicle for an 
evoked elemental succubus or incubus, or might 
under certain different conditions be similarly 
utilized to accommodate or materialize a ' famil- 
iar' of a higher order," says Duchesne, writing 
of some researches carried out in the Var, "but 
I am still at a loss to know what induces the 
phenomena to appear with such fulminant 
energy and purposeless commencement." 



180 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

A peculiar case of poltergeist occurred in 
Hertfordshire last spring.* The farm bailiff of 
a home farm complained that his cottage, which 
looked out on the yard of the farmstead, had 
become intolerable. Crockery was smashed on 
the dresser, pots and pans flew about while no- 
body touched them, and when the whole family 
were at midday lunch in their living-room a 
kettle of boiling water which was simmering 
on the kitchener hob was brought through an 
adjoining open door and slammed down among 
the diners at the table without spilling a drop. 

Stones were thrown, windows broken, and 
even bedclothes snatched off. I went down in 
response to an invitation by the owner of the 
estate and soon convinced myself that the phe- 
nomena were authentic. 

The family consisted of the bailiff, his wife, 
a girl of fourteen, and a son of twenty. The 
latter was not much in the house, being about 
on the hills with the sheep, as it was lambing 
time. 

Previous experience led one to suspect the 
girl, who seemed quite honest and very fright- 

* Author's note, 1912. 



SOME NEW FACTS AND THEORIES 181 

ened at the occurrences. My host and I were 
personal witnesses of flying stones and still 
more remarkable the scattering of a big sheaf 
of straw. 

The sheaf was being carried from the barn 
to the cow-house by the girl herself at about 
three in the afternoon. We were talking to the 
bailiff's wife. Suddenly the girl stopped and 
the big bundle of straw seemed to be lifted out 
of her arms at least two feet above her head. 
It balanced for a moment or two like a captive 
gas balloon, then whirled into thousands of 
separate straws which flew all about the yard. 

No conceivable trick of wind — and it was a 
wettish, windless day — nor any human effort 
could have accomplished it. The truss burst 
like a shell, some of the straws flying right 
over the roofs of the outbuildings. 

The terrified girl burst into tears and ran to 
her mother for comfort and protection. 

That night we sent the girl away, and though 
manifestations continued for another two days, 
these were of decreasing violence. 

The cottage was only a few years old and no 
deaths had occurred there, but the farmstead 



182 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

was a very old one, the estate having a con- 
nected history to pre-Tudor times. I was 
pnzzled to find any clue to the exciting cause 
of the trouble. 

I went over the whole place most carefully, 
but found nothing to guide me, and at last 
turned my attention to the structure of the 
cottage. A certain intuition or psychic suscep- 
tibility led me to suspect one of the big kitchen 
rafters which supported the ceiling of the 
kitchen and the floor of the girl's room. 

On inquiry I found that the architect who had 
designed the new buildings had employed a 
local contractor and used old red bricks and 
old timber wherever possible in order to pre- 
serve the old-fashioned effect given by weath- 
ered colours. 

It was not difficult to trace the material; the 
local contractor's foreman told us at once 
where it had come from. 

"It stood in our yard here for ten years or 
more before we put it into the new buildings,' ' 
said the foreman, "and it come to us when we 
pulled down Blackley Old Grange." 

"What kind of a place was that? " said I. 



SOME NEW FACTS AND THEORIES 183 

" Private madhouse at the last," he an- 
swered. "The owner was a doctor and he went 
mad and hanged himself, he did, after killing 
one of the patients a month before. He hanged 
himself just before the visitors was expected to 
see the patient he had killed.' ' 

• • • • • • • 

Research carried us no further, except that I 
learnt that the murdered patient lay for a 
month in the room in which she was killed be- 
fore the crime was found out, after the man's 
suicide. It was impossible to trace the beam to 
its position, but I gathered that the doctor 
hanged himself from a window bar or curtain 
hook, not from the beam. 

I am inclined to believe that the absorption 
of force takes place from prolonged contact 
with the emanation of the dead rather than 
from the transient impression of conscious 
thoughts, but there was no further recrudes- 
cence of the trouble when an iron girder was 
substituted for the beam, and the girl, when 
brought back, was perfectly normal. 

I experimented with the girl later, but did 
not find that she possessed any marked gifts, 



184 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

although she was indubitably a good hypnotic 
subject. The beam, or rather a section of it, 
I secured for the purposes of research, the re- 
mainder was burnt.* 

Another puzzling if popular subject is that 
of spirit photographs. I have handled scores 
of them, but have never yet come across one in 
which all possibility of ingenious fraud has been 
entirely eliminated. 

Certain people have claimed peculiar gifts, 
but in no case has a satisfactory result been 
obtained at a genuine test-seance, where scien- 
tific precautions have been observed. 

If anyone has this gift it can be demonstrated 
easily. The studio must be neutral ground- 
that is to say, the room must not be the claim- 
ant's habitual studio. The camera must be pro- 
vided by the testers, as also the dark slide and 
plates. The medium must be stripped perfectly 
naked and the same rule should apply to the 
testing committee if it includes anyone known 



* Valuable data were gained by experiment with this disas- 
trous relic. They are not suitable for publication at this 
stage, and I learnt recently of similar objectionable attributes 
associated with a battlefield souvenir from near Ypres. 



SOME NEW FACTS AND THEORIES 185 

to the medium. He should not be allowed to 
touch plates, dark slide, or camera except when 
naked and under close scrutiny. 

Development should be carried out under 
test conditions at the nearest chemist's dark 
room. 

There is no known spiritual law which should 
lead us to think that a psychograph or spirit 
photograph is a possibility, and until the matter 
has been tested by a properly qualified body of 
men all such photographs are open to the grav- 
est suspicion. 

Money-making is not the only motive for 
fraud, and many of the fakers are often more 
anxious to build up a bogus reputation for 
"mystery working" than to make a direct profit 
on the transaction. 

The avenues of fraud are so numerous that 
it is only possible to indicate a few of the 
methods adopted to deceive the credulous. 

The spirit photograph is deemed to be genu- 
ine if it is taken under conditions which an 
average expert photographer holds to be fraud- 
proof. The weakness of the whole case lies in 
the fact that they cannot be obtained under 



186 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

genuine scientific, as opposed to amateur, test 
conditions. 

In a word, the spirit image is imprinted on 
the negative under conditions not normally sus- 
pected by the photographers. 

There are several methods of attaining the 
result, even when the photographer brings his 
own plates and dark slides and his own 
camera. 

First is the background trick. An acid solu- 
tion of sulphate of quinine is invisible to the 
eye, but shows in the photograph. " Phe- 
nomena' ' painted on the wall or near by the 
objects appear in the photograph though in- 
visible to the eye. 

Second is the contact process by which a 
small negative of the " spirit' ' face is mounted 
on a background of card prepared with radio- 
active salt solution. Many of these salts are 
rich in infra-red rays which will project an 
image through a metal dark slide. The 
" medium" has only to handle the dark slide 
during the sitting or the plate in the dark room 
previous to development, in order to make a 
contact image. 



SOME NEW FACTS AND THEORIES 187 

A cruder variation of this, the electric pencil 
flashlight with a rubber cup over the end con- 
taining the "spirit face" negative contact with 
the exposed plate, is achieved in the dark room. 
The instrument lies hidden in the medium's 
sleeves. 

The third method is that most commonly 
used. The "spirit image' ' is projected through 
a minute lens in a hole in the wall of the studio. 
The beam of light is sometimes passed through 
a prism series in order to allow a room parallel 
to the studio to be used for the purpose of pro- 
jecting, and it is possible for the apparatus to 
be arranged inside a piece of furniture in the 
studio. 

The sitter usually has his back to the source 
of the projection and the "medium" takes the 
photograph and makes the exposure, so the 
fraud is childishly easy. 

Even expert photographers are fooled by this 
trick, as they are satisfied that if plates, slide, 
and camera are not tampered with, fraud is 
impossible. 

When stereoscopic cameras with twin lenses 
are used the fraud is manifest. Sometimes the 



188 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

fakers try hard to get an image into each 
half of the plate, but never are the " spirit 
images" in the same relative position or 
plane. 

If the sitters are well known it is not difficult 
for photographs of deceased relatives to be 
obtained and the spirit negative made from the 
photograph. In many cases reproduction of 
newspaper halftone blocks have been found on 
so-called spirit pictures. These show the dia- 
mond patterns of the screen and are obvious 
fakes, but are accepted by many uncritical be- 
lievers. 

In the case of an unknown sitter, strange 
blurred faces or perfect strangers are thrown 
on to the plate and excused as " guardian 
angels." 

When the medium's own apparatus or dark 
room is used there are endless ways of faking, 
but it is these methods of faking an image with- 
out raising the ordinary photographer's sus- 
picions that are interesting. 

The whole business is a cruel and heartless 
fraud, but the dupes are not really deserving 
of pity. If there was a word of truth in the 



SOME NEW FACTS AND THEORIES 189 

claim of "spirit photographers" the testimony 
of an official test by a reputable committee of 
the Eoyal Photographic Society would settle 
the question once and for all. 

Myths and legend have grown up round spirit 
photographs till Spiritualists have at last come 
to believe in their genuineness. Yet the whole 
of their belief rests on nothing stronger than 
the "miraculousness" of a conjuring trick. A 
good sleight-of-hand expert can accomplish 
card or other tricks which seem perfectly in- 
explicable to the layman, but we do not acclaim 
them as evidences of spirit power because we 
are deceived by them. 

The spirit photographers deplore and avoid 
investigation by really efficient scientific men. 
They welcome the amateur with half -knowledge, 
as his very cocksureness renders him an easier 
dupe. He concentrates on the obvious roads to 
fraud, ignoring those which lie without the slen- 
der realm of his knowledge. 

The phenomena of what may be called light- 
less photography were long ago described by 
Dr. Gustave le Bon,* who describes instan- 

* The Evolution of Forces. Gustave le Bon. 



190 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

taneous photography by " Black-light. ' ' Inci- 
dentally a common incandescent gas mantle 
possesses quite enough radioactive properties 
for ordinary experiments. 

It is only by the destruction of fraudulent 
phenomena that the phenomena will be rightly 
understood and generally accepted. The Spir- 
itualist who accepts and bolsters up dubious 
phenomena does far more harm to his own 
cause than the most pronounced sceptic. 

The main point about spurious spirit photog- 
raphy is this. It claims that mechanical chemi- 
cal relations are produced by spirit agency — 
yet though this chemical reaction is said to be 
produced with ease by certain individuals and 
circles, it flinches from facing a simple test 
which would, if proved to be true, convert the 
bulk of the sceptical world to an acceptance of 
the truth of spirit photography. 

I have met many credulous folk who cherish 
blurred plates, obvious double exposures, " ac- 
cidents/ ' such as imperfectly cleaned plates 
and even the most blatant swindles. Nothing 
can shake their convictions — but credulity does 
nothing to prove fact. 



SOME NEW FACTS AND THEORIES 191 

Mr. Gambier Bolton has experimented for 
years with spirit photography, but has so far 
obtained nothing except plates bearing indica- 
tions of a radiant energy similar to the N-rays 
of Becquerel. Many expert photographers in- 
terested in psychic matters agree that the true 
spirit photography does not exist and a can- 
vass of both press and studio photographers 
who are experts in their profession reveals the 
same unhesitating expression of opinion. The 
same opinion is held not only by the profes- 
sional and technical lay element, but by occul- 
tists and students of research whose standard 
of psychic knowledge is infinitely higher than 
that of the Spiritualists. 

The aura which surrounds the human form is 
visible to certain people, but the faculty for see- 
ing the aura does not necessarily involve the 
possession of any psychic gifts at all and is 
often an indication of a slight degree of colour- 
blindness. 

The ordinary photographic plate represents 
colours differently to their relative values as 
seen by the human eye, and in order to get the 



192 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

true effect certain dyes are mixed with the 
emulsion of the plates, or dyed screens which 
eliminate certain rays are interposed between 
the lens and the object. 

The normal individual cannot see the aura, 
but a simple chemical device will put him on a 
par with the best natural aura discerner. 

If a narrow glass trough or an oblong clear 
crystal glass bottle is filled with a dilute solu- 
tion of the dye di-cyanin * which dissolves 
readily in absolute alcohol ; that is all the appa- 
ratus necessary. 

The subject whose aura is to be inspected 
should be placed against a black or neutral 
background opposite a source of illumination, 
preferably a north-facing window. 

The observer then takes the bottle of blue 
solution and gazes through it at the clear sky 
for a period of some minutes. This serves to 
eliminate the retinal impression of certain of 
the normal light rays and renders the ob- 
server's eyes sensitive to vibrations or rays not 

* Used in colour screen making for photography, and poison- 
ous. Some glasses used in bottle making are not suitable, but 
a trial of one or two suitably shaped ones will always reveal 
one that works all right, 



SOME NEW FACTS AND THEORIES 193 

normally perceptible and stimulates an ab- 
normal acuteness of vision. 

The room should now be entirely darkened, 
and as soon as the eyes have recovered their 
"owl sight" the body of the subject will be 
seen to be surrounded by an envelope of vi- 
bratory exhalations whose colour varies with 
different individuals and changes under stress 
of emotion. 

Suggestion or hypnosis exercises very pe- 
culiar effects on this aura, which would seem to 
be, if not an ectoplasm a psychoplasm in itself, 
yet the invisible vehicle which is capable of 
being separated from the material body and 
forming the astral body. 

The aura vibration and the Becquerel or 
N-rays are closely connected, and the scientific 
hypothesis suggests that these rays are in the 
scale just above the infra-violet. 

The simple instrument indicated above has 
certain therapeutic values in the diagnosis of 
illness, but is also invaluable for the psychic 
analysis of hauntings, cases of unconscious 
mediumship, and other matters. 



CHAPTER XI 

OMENTAL. OCCULTISM 

The Orient hides many secrets of occultism, 
and it is almost a platitude that the few secrets 
that the West has painfully deciphered have 
been known for all time to the East — and are 
nothing remarkable. 

This is one of those large gestures of speech 
that contain a half-truth and pass for a whole 
truth. It is on a par with the statement that 
all Chinese business men are honest — which 
they are not. Oriental occultism is far too vast 
a subject to be accepted or dismissed as sum- 
marily as this, but one thing is certaii^and that 
is that Oriental occult systems are not suitable 
to the Western man. 

There are one or two cardinal points that may 
be grasped at once. Firstly, the exiled native 
in a Western country who claims occult powers 
and the gift of being able to teach and transmit 
them is always and invariably a fakir of the 

194 



ORIENTAL OCCULTISM 195 

lowest kind. He is usually a low-caste and dis- 
reputable native or half-breed, and it may be 
accounted to his credit that after all he is not 
expected to know any better. His dupes, on the 
other hand, the white men and women that 
listen to his balderdash and sit at his seances, 
are even guiltier parties than he is. They at 
least ought to know better than to listen to the 
first black-and-tan "Swami" or "Guru" that 
establishes a bogus tabernacle in the backwaters 
of Balham or Bayswater. 

The second point is that the true Eastern oc- 
cultist, whatever his grade of adeptship in his 
mysteries, never practises any of his arts or 
knowledge for money or equivalent reward. 
This is a lesson which might well be learned 
by the fraternity of mediums and so-called oc- 
cultists that infest London and other great 
cities at home and abroad. 

A medium in receipt of fees for seances or 
lectures will never and can never develop his or 
her powers beyond the stage at which they have 
arrived when it becomes possible to use them as 
a direct or indirect means of making money. 

In the East this is realized, and the vow of 



196 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

poverty is more than a metaphor, but they 
claim that it is a poverty of the body fully re- 
paid by riches of the soul. 

Practically the whole of Hindu occultism is 
best described as peculiar methods of self -hyp- 
nosis with the object of provoking states of 
bliss and ecstasy. It is upon the basis of the in- 
duction of these peculiar phenomena that ninety 
per cent, of the Brahmin religious cults are 
established. By one path or another the vari- 
ous beliefs attain earnest of fulfilment, but the 
primary causes of these psychical phenomena 
are physiological in origin. 

This material path to spiritual success is ad- 
mitted and glossed over as being but part of the 
mystery. None the less, there is little to show 
that anything beyond these self -produced states 
of hypnotism or suggested phenomena are ever 
attained by even the greatest of the adepts, and 
there is no justification of their dogmatic re- 
ligious teachings even in the results attained. 

The Oriental mind is more easily freed from 
the shackles of the body than is the Western 
organism. Just as the hold of the average 
native upon life is inferior to a European's, so 



ORIENTAL OCCULTISM 197 

is the native's mastery of conscious will far 
less. The faculties of clairvoyance can be 
created by almost every dominant European in 
any young native, and they are both physically 
and psychically an inferior race. 

It is because of their greater racial familiar- 
ity and acquaintance with the occult that the 
myth of their spiritual supremacy has been 
born. The unheeding deem every Easterner a 
potential mage, unknowing that he only de- 
velops his psychic gifts, which are in point of 
fact mental weaknesses, when in contact with 
a far more powerfully organized Western will. 

The organized powers of occult India have 
loathed and hated British rule since pre-Mutiny 
days. In a very few rare cases, black magic — ■ 
often allied with native poisons — has killed a 
white man, but on the whole the result has been 
a pitiful demonstration compared to what these 
magi should have been capable of. 

Occultism in India is built to serve but one 
end, the domination of lesser castes by those 
who master its secrets and have aptitude to im- 
pose their powers on others. In the past it 
stood for an amazing tyranny, and for this 



198 A MODEEN OCCULTIST 

reason — its lost criminal powers— it is opposed 
to British rule. 

It is noteworthy that the English Society of 
Theosophists, whose jig-saw religion is largely 
compounded of Oriental elements, is now 
prominently identified with schemes for the po- 
litical emancipation of India, which will rein- 
force the tyrannous power of the Brahmin. 

The whole scheme of Oriental occultism is 
quite incomprehensible without a sound basic 
knowledge of the religious systems of which it 
is part and parcel. These enjoy a difficult and 
complex nomenclature, and their words have 
been borrowed indiscriminately without due 
respect to their precise meaning. 

Yoga conveys a certain popular meaning, but 
it must be remembered that there are number- 
less Yogas, subdivided again into endless sub- 
variants. 

The initiate undergoes a prolonged course of 
mental and physical training designed to stimu- 
late concentration of the will and subdue the 
body. 

Little by little the faculties of surrender to 
ecstatic forms of self-hypnosis are induced, 



ORIENTAL OCCULTISM 199 

Ananda or " bliss,' ' either material or spiritual 
ecstasy, according to the Yoga practised, being 
the end of the process. 

The full development of the powers of a Yogi 
is beset with all kinds of dangers and difficulties. 
The physical strain is a severe one and the psy- 
chic dangers encountered considerable. The 
evil spirits of the West find their Oriental coun- 
terparts in Pisachas, Shahinis, Bhirtas, Pretas, 
and Rakshashas, all malignant and terrible 
manifestations of the demon world. 

In the end, certain types of Yogi appear to 
develop the full talents of a materializing me- 
dium and are capable of producing the phe- 
nomena that we associate with a medium of the 
power of Eusapia Palladino. But — and it is 
a very important "but" — these phenomena 
are capable of production in full tropic day- 
light. 

From the days of Jacolliot * to those of re- 
cent Theosophical investigations — Oriental 
magic has never been brought to real test con- 
ditions, but in the records gathered by inde- 



* Occult Science in India and among the Ancients. Louis 
Jacolliot. 



200 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

pendent students there is ample ground for 
stating that the genuine occult phenomena (as 
distinct from mere fakir's conjuring tricks) 
occur independently of darkness or special light 
conditions. 

When we consider the fuss made by Euro- 
pean mediums over even twilight conditions, it 
is remarkable that these offer no obstacle to the 
Oriental " spirits.' ' 

These phenomena, too, are not confined to 
orthodox Hindu, Brahmin, Tantvik, or Guru 
followers of any particular creed, race, or re- 
ligion. Certain Indian Moslem sects produce 
devotees capable of equivalent phenomena, but 
variants of obscure Tibetan sects, Burmese, 
Malay, Mohammedans, and followers of both 
theistic and pantheistic religions have equal 
powers. 

The idolater, the Muslim, and the Christian 
medium all share the same belief in "spirit" 
control and in certain states produce the same 
results. Where we may learn something from 
the East is not in the line of morals, for their 
morals are different from ours — and many of 
their religious customs revoltingly beastly — but 



ORIENTAL OCCULTISM 201 

in the way of the physical induction of the psy- 
chic state. 

The basis of a great many Yogas is the libera- 
tion of psychoplasm and ectoplasm by a com- 
bination of concentration on certain internal 
centres and the repetition of spells or sonorous 
magical evocations. 

These affect the breathing so that in effect the 
body is subjected to a definite rhythmical vi- 
bration. It is physical exercise of mind and 
brain, applying mind-force to the stimulation 
and excitement of internal nerve centres. 

These six centres are visualized mentally as 
lotuses. They cannot be precisely located in 
scientific anatomy, but correspond in most cases 
with central nervous plexuses and they are as 
well known in Mohammedan and Zoroastrian 
mystic cults, as they are in the Indian Upani- 
shads and Tantras, and are familiar to the In- 
dians of Yucatan and Guatemala, where ritual, 
combined with a species of physical massage, 
is employed to initiate the hierophant into the 
tribal mysteries. 

The school of Western occultists who hold the 
theory of the all-pervading astral or magic light 



202 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

or fire, hold that these " centres' ' open, or act 
as concentrators of an exterior, all-prevailing 
force which is thus conducted to the conscious- 
ness, enabling the operator to make contact with 
another plane. 

In the Oriental theory this force is deemed to 
be always latent in the body, and is aroused, 
evoked, or stimulated in particular ways. The 
discussion of the relative values of these two 
main schools of thought — static and dynamic 
light— or their variants is beyond the scope of 
these notes. 

The lowest of the lotuses or centres is the 
nerve centre within the body in the region of 
the prostatic gland, the next is midway between 
this and the third which is the navel centre or 
solar plexus. The fourth is nominally the heart, 
the fifth, that at the base of the throat, the 
sixth, that between the eyebrows. In visualizing 
these lotuses with the "mental eye," the depth 
back in the body of each centre is assumed to 
be close to the spine. 

Mind force is concentrated by the Yogi under 
the name Vogabala, and in Oriental black magic 
this is concentrated on the lowest centre, ac- 



ORIENTAL OCCULTISM 203 

cording to the ritual of the infamous Prayoga, 
with the result of inducing sexual hallucina- 
tions. 

In the so-called white or mediumistic magic, 
the centre of energy is apparently by the third 
centre (the navel), for materialization phe- 
nomena, and the fifth, or base of the throat 
centre for clairaudience. 

Those who can reach the sixth claim the 
power of astral voyaging in the spirit world 
and perception of things on the mortal plane at 

a distance. 

The physiology of the process is not yet un- 
derstood, but following on the breathing proc- 
esses or Pranayama, which relax the body and 
induce certain rhythms, a progressive excitation 
and rigor of the centres is induced by autohyp- 
nosis. The nerve centres control various limbs 
and functions, and as each is "put to sleep" so 
the Yogi becomes rigid and cataleptic. 

Yogis are able to hold out their arms for 
hours at a stretch without apparent fatigue— so 
in the same way can a hypnotized subject be 
placed in an attitude of rigidity by an operator. 

These progressive inhibitions of functions 



204 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

cannot be achieved by the Western occultist 
without the most careful study and painstaking 
preparations. The practices are both mentally 
and physically dangerous, but when mastered 
either in part or in whole, they can be evoked 
by systems entirely at variance with the ac- 
cepted Indian methods. In fact, certain non- 
sense rhymes of the same rhythm and breath- 
ing values as some of the Tantric spells or 
mantras are equally efficacious. 

There was infinite wisdom in the old law of 
magic which said " Change not the barbaric 
names of evocation," but if they were changed, 
provided rhythm and breathing are preserved, 
the sense does not appear to matter. If one 
verse of Macaulay's "Horatius" * was a power- 
ful spell — almost any other verse in the same 
poem would produce the same effect — if deliv- 
ered in the same way. 

This argument is sometimes used by a scep- 
tic, but after all it only proves that the same 
result can be produced by analogous means. 
Salt disappears when dissolved in water, but so 
it does in half a dozen other liquids. 

* Lays of Ancient Rome. Macaulay. 



OEIENTAL OCCULTISM 205 

The tales of life on other planes brought back 
by native spirits evoked by Oriental magicians 
in no way tally with Western accounts, but as 
phallic worship is integral with many Eastern 
beliefs, it is no matter for wonder that some 
Eastern spirit evidence concerning the next 
plane would make the most hardened Western 
libertine blush. They also affirm with consid- 
erable emphasis that on the next plane nation- 
alities and colour lines are unknown, a point 
which is reinforced by the number of ex- 
coloured spirits which frequent Western 
seances. 

It is indeed difficult to know what to believe. 

The Yogis can produce phenomena of ma- 
terialization, prolonged trance states, and can 
sometimes act as powerful hypnotists and seize 
the Durga, literally citadel, of another's body. 
On the other hand, the net yield of all purely 
Indian occultism is very disappointing. This 
may be due to the selflessness inculcated in their 
religious teaching, which subdues love and 
hatred as equal enemies of spiritual progress. 
If their magic were efficient, much more would 
be done with it, and the consensus of general 



206 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

opinion is that despite its extraordinary inter- 
est to the mystic and the scholar it has little to 
offer of interest to the Spiritualist. 

Certain of lesser known Yogas which do pro- 
duce astonishing phenomena belong definitely to 
the domain of black magic and only parallel cer- 
tain well-known outbreaks of phallic sorcery 
that occurred in Europe in the Middle Ages. 

The cult of evocation is held by some students 
to have spread from India to the Arab races, 
but more recent investigations suggest that the 
astonishing performances achieved by certain 
nominally Moslem sects in the fastnesses of 
Tripoli and Morocco are due to the survivals 
from the aborigines of those lands rather than 
to Oriental ideas. 

The Berbers are a distinct primitive race 
akin to the Basques, and probably identical with 
the ancient Britons who built Stonehenge. To- 
day they are fanatical Moslemin, but the old 
practices linger as rituals of specific religious 
cults, such as the Sufi Senoussi and the Aissouri 
of Morocco. They are racially strange folk and 
the Moslem veneer is only a lay religion im- 
posed on a mass of pagan folklore closely con- 



OBIENTAL OCCULTISM 207 

nected with serpent worship and astronomical 
observances. Their festivals of the solstices 
have an outward-seeming Muslim connection, 
but the inner hidden occult religion is a far 
older thing. 

The Berbers are not of Arab stock; they are 
Semitic and they are probably pre-Aryan. 
Some writers * trace their connection to the 
original Firbolgs of Iceland, and the ethnology 
of this mysterious race is still a matter of specu- 
lation and doubt. 

Pre-eminent among their distinctive differ- 
ences from the ordinary Arab is the esteem in 
which they hold women. Women are chief- 
tainesses among them, and above all the women 
are the repositories of the lost lore of magic. 
It is to them that the tribesmen turn for the 
carrying out of the mystic harvest ceremonies, 
the charming of unfruitful fields, and the light- 
ing of the magic Beltane fires. 

Fire plays no inconsiderable part in their 
rituals, and is only called by its Arabic name 
el-aafeats (the comforter) when used for do- 
mestic purposes. The sacrificial and cere- 

* See The Arabs of Tripoli. Alan Ostler. 



208 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

monial fires are always spoken of either in the 
Shil-luh or Schluch tongue — the true Berber 
language or referred to as B'lnisac, a \ term 
whose philology is unknown, but which appar- 
ently contains the age-old Bel or Baal motive. 

This fire cult, coupled with a still more mys- 
tical inner creed symbolized by serpent worship, 
may be noted by the student explorer among 
the Berber folk. Riffis, Mashed Hojja Tuareks 
of the Sahara, certain Kabyles of Tripoli, and 
other tribes all belong to the same strange race, 
and there are reasons for believing that the 
Berbers are identical with the mystical Fairies 
— the Good People — so called from a propitia- 
tory irony because they were so amazingly bad. 

Berbers alone of savage folk raid and kill at 
night. They are essentially a people of the dark, 
and he who sifts the mass of terrible folklore 
about the earliest fairies in Britain will find 
a parallel between these terrible unholy bar- 
barians given to sorcery, necromancy and un- 
holy rites, the stealing of children for sacrificial 
purposes, and other glossed horrors attributed 
to the Good People — and the Berber races of 
to-day. 



OEIENTAL OCCULTISM 209 

The practices continue. 

In 1909 I was travelling in the Gharb country 
of Morocco, where there is a large Berber ele- 
ment. The French occupation of the Shawiah 
and the meteoric rise of Sultan Mulai Hand had 
left the country unsettled and dangerous. 

Beyond a war correspondent or two and a 
handful of German engineers — or spies, em- 
ployed by the firm of Mannesman — there were 
no Europeans in the country outside of the 
coast towns. For the capital and Manahesh 
the big cities of the South were closed, and a 
Christian's life was nowhere worth a moment's 
purchase among the fanatics. 

I am but an indifferent Arabic scholar, but a 
certain knowledge of classical Hebrew served 
one well, for there are many debased Jews in 
Morocco. For the rest, as the high-class Moors 
are a fair race and often blue-eyed, travelling in 
native clothes and well bronzed by the sun I 
suffered no molestation and could rely on the 
fidelity of my four body-servants. 

Some five days' ride northwest of the argan 
forests of the coast belt, I was well within 
Berber territory. This was mostly stony hill 



210 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

lands, for Morocco is simply rock deserts and 
hills, interspersed with lightly watered fertile 
valleys and occasional oases of poplar-sheltered 

walls. 

The holy city of Tarndant lay to the north of 
me, and I had crossed the Wadi Sifan river and 
was going south from the Iber Kaken Pass on 
the caravan route east into the Ait Jellal 

country. 

There, deep in the hills, lies the ruin of a 
Roman city of which strange tales are told. It 
is even not certain that it is Roman, for a 
volume of notes, painstakingly compiled for 
fifteen years by a resident in a coast town, dis- 
closes unmistakable Phoenician characteristics, 
but I at least cannot tell, for my expedition 
had to beat a swift retreat a bare two days' 
march from the nominal valley of the dead 

city. 

It was on the way there that my little troop 
of horsemen and pack mules halted at the 
Berber village of M'Aerbil Ida and were re- 
ceived as guests of honour for the night. The 
village was a curious medley of thorn and cactus 
fences, cane-thatched huts, and deep caves cut 



ORIENTAL OCCULTISM 211 

in the friable freestone rock of the mountain 
side. 

The men wore the close-knitted wool caps of 
the country and had the curious snake-like head 
angles and the long, curving sidelock and thin 
beards of coarse hair that just distinguish these 
strange, elf -like folk. Something in their broad 
cheekbones and curious pale eyes suggests the 
snake. 

Mohammed-el-Suissi, my horse boy, told me 
as he pitched my tent that he did not like the 
village or the people; "they were," he said, 
"not good Moslemin." As religious orthodoxy 
was not one of Mohammed's strong points, I 
did not worry much, but when Hassan-el-Askri, 
my soldier muleteer, warned me to keep my 
arms about me I realized that my Moors con- 
sidered that not even the law of desert hospi- 
tality was held inviolate among these folk. 

There is, however, a brotherhood of initiates 
of which I am a member, whose signs are rec- 
ognized in many parts of the globe. Gesticu- 
lation is a feature of polite Arabic conversation, 
and I soon secured an answering sign from one 
of the head-men of the tribe. Within half an 



212 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

hour nobody in that village would have dared to 
steal the least of my belongings. 

I had considerable difficulty in carrying on 
my conversation as my Arabic, apart from ordi- 
nary needs of travel, was weak and classical 
rather than popular. The Berbers, too, always 
spoke of these things in their own tongue, Shil- 
luh, and none of my entourage being initiate I 
had no interpreter. 

My host was Sidi-el-Belarni, an old chieftain 
who was also a shereef — that is, a lineal de- 
scendant of the Prophet and a person of sanc- 
tity. He soon dropped the mask of orthodoxy 
and conversed freely on the metaphysical side 
of his cult. I found it easier to understand than 
to converse with him, but gained an easier ap- 
preciation as I got used to it. 

I stayed a second day in the village, as one 
of our animals was badly lamed and needed 
rest, and took occasion to ask him concerning 
the art of reviving the dead to temporary life 
which the Berbers are commonly held to pos- 
sess. 

He made no objections to my questions, and, 
to my delight, offered to give me a demonstra- 



ORIENTAL OCCULTISM 213 

tion if the ritual of the women who held the 
secrets would consent to exhibit them. At noon 
I was taken to a kind of tribal palaver and the 
matter was put to a species of test or judg- 
ment by lot. A young girl was blindfolded and 
given a basket containing short and long sticks. 
Certain prayers and incantations were per- 
formed and she passed into a semi-trance state. 

My permission depended on her selection of a 
majority of short sticks, but as I could not see 
the sticks, and she was in a state of light hyp- 
nosis, I made occasion to recite one or two re- 
sounding Hebrew charms and laid my hands 
on her head; after that, all was easy. Her will 
obeyed mine and she selected the sticks as I 
desired. It was almost an unanimous election. 

When dusk fell with all its African sudden- 
ness, the rising moon hung like a blazing buck- 
ler in the sky. Dogs barked in answer to the 
distant hill jackals and the acrid smoke of the 
camel-dung fires hung like a sour fog about 
the camp. 

We left the village and went about a quarter 
of a mile along the hillside to the local burying- 
place, following a stony track that was little 



214 A MODEEN OCCULTIST 

more than a dried watercourse. At the head of 
our little procession were two men with flaming 
argan wood torches tied to long canes, behind 
them came four men with long silver-decorated 
Eemington rifles, and then the little group of 
sorceresses followed by myself and the elders. 

The burial ground was a scanty clearing 
among the scrub and dwarf oaks, and bushes 
encroached upon the outer graves. Each tomb 
was marked by a stone monolith or pillar, 
rough-hewn, with a knob at the top in pur- 
suance of the Muslim custom. The graves 
radiated in circles from the central stone, 
whereon fluttered little bundles of rags and 
similar votive offerings. 

"We made our way to a recent grave, which 
was rapidly opened by the men, disclosing, a 
bare two feet beneath the surface, the bent body 
of a man buried in sitting posture. It was a 
ghoul-like business and the whole air of the 
graveyard carried the tainted scent of the 
dreadful carrion they were unearthing. 

In the meanwhile, the women were busy, and 
from behind the tombs brought forth skulls 
which they anointed with some strange grease 



ORIENTAL OCCULTISM 215 

and set on sticks in a circle round the central 
altar. 

At last the corpse, in its foul, earth-stained 
wrappings, was exhumed and carried in a piece 
of sheeting to the altar. The men who had 
served as guards and grave diggers then with- 
drew out of earshot, and the ceremonies began. 

Fire was applied to the circle of skulls and 
they began to burn. I noticed that the eyes and 
ear sockets were stuffed with old rags which 
served as wicks for the unclean oil. They flared 
smokily, sending off a foul-scented sooty smoke. 

The women began to chant their monotonous 
wailing rhymes, and their leader rocked to and 
fro leading this strange chorus. 

Suddenly a power seemed to come upon her 
and she became frenzied, dancing round the 
skull circle in time to the refrain, but undulat- 
ing her body in a strange, snake-like manner. 
Then she knelt down on the ground, and from 
somewhere about her person produced some- 
thing which she rubbed on her hands. At first 
it resembled phosphorus, a quick, flickering 
faint blue light, but gradually it grew in 
strength until streamers of blue flame, some six 



216 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

inches long, seemed to project from her fingers 
while her whole person seemed outlined in a 
faint shape of flame. 

From the ground she picked up a short length 
of cane which in her grasp seemed to project 
this blue emanation — then with a final chorus 
of evocation, she leapt upon the altar and knelt 
astride of the dead man. 

With quick passes, she ran her hands the 
length of his slack limbs and then poised both 
hands above the navel of the corpse, about a 
foot higher than the shroud. 

The emanation curved down like a blue-green 
waterfall of flame and seemed to enter the man. 
Incredible as it may seem, the dead limbs slowly 
began to stretch out jerkily, uneasily, as if 
awaking, yet — instinct with a new vitality. 

The ghastly, lolling head, stained with cor- 
ruption and bound with the jaw bandage, began 
to oscillate on the dreadful neck and the whole 
corpse began to phosphoresce with a dull green 
luminosity. 

The chorus now ceased chanting and a small 
fire was lighted on a cairn of stones. From 
this certain objects were taken and placed in 



ORIENTAL OCCULTISM 217 

the dead man's hands. The fingers slowly 
curled up and grasped them ! 

The singing began again and the sorceress, 
still across the body, took the cane she carried 
and, breaking the bandage that bound the dead 
man's jaw, inserted the end in his mouth. 

Then making certain passes and signs with 
her hands, she began to exhale deep breaths into 
the body, seeming to make the mystic passes 
as if to force the living breath down into the 
dead man's lungs. 

Little by little life seemed to creep back into 
that unholy shell. The dreadful contours of 
death sunk back, the form became more human 
and the motions not the strange jerky rigors of 
the first part of the ceremony, but the very signs 
of life. 

The eyelids flickered and retracted, the dread- 
ful drawn lips relaxed and in a minute or so the 
dead man sat up in his cerements — and spoke. 

Then followed the dread consultation of the 
dead. It was evident from the awe and respect 
with which he was addressed that he was treated 
not as a reanimated individual, but as an august 
visitant from another world. 



218 A MODEKN OCCULTIST 

Thin, high and shrill, the usually coarse gut- 
turals of the Shilluh tongue seemed strange 
from Its lips. I suspected ventriloquy for a 
while, but could see the slow movements of its 
throat muscles and glottis and the rise and fall 
of the shroud over the sunken abdomen. 
Nevertheless it was sheer horror to listen to 
and dreadful, monstrous to see. 

I was only permitted to ask one question, and 
I asked would my quest be successful. I re- 
ceived an unequivocal answer that it would fail, 
but not through my fault, but because of the 
will of the spirits of the departed and the curse 
of the dead that hung over the city. 

Incidentally this discounted the advice given 
by other spirit communicants before the ex- 
pedition was undertaken, — but later proved 
true. 

The ritual of re-dissolution was shorter but 
far more terrible. Again the sorceress made 
passes. The objects were taken from the hands 
of the dead and slowly the life left the body, 
which swelled and twitched as it returned to its 
original state of terrible decomposition. A 
thin wailing chant seemed to symbolize the 



ORIENTAL OCCULTISM 219 

flight of the spirit back to its own realms. 

I pressed unsuccessful inquiry concerning the 
details of this astounding piece of necromancy 
which was neither more nor less than that ter- 
rible old mystery, the raising of the dead in the 
flesh. 

I could obtain no details of the objects placed 
in the man's hands or the material used to 
produce the astonishing outpouring of blue, 
luminous matter. 

So far as I could ascertain, the life force of 
the sorceress herself entered the body, but the 
ceremony of creating it was essential in com- 
bination with the charms in the hands before 
the spirit could return. 

Neither could I ascertain that it was the soul 
of the departed or some other spirit that en- 
tered into the reanimated corpse. 

Some powerful communities are able, it is 
said, to despatch these dreadful reanimated 
dead on missions of evil. But their power only 
lasts throughout the night and fails at sun- 
rise. 

Here there is an undoubted suggestion of the 



220 A MODERN OCCULTIST 

practical possibility of vampirism, but I could 
not learn that these folk possess the lost art of 
imprisoning a human or spirit soul within the 
body of an animal.* 

I am nevertheless convinced that among the 
Berbers of North Africa will be found the key 
to many legends that have come down to us 
from our ancestors in Great Britain, and above 
all I counsel those good folk who read the pleas- 
ant little fake stories of pretty little fairies in 
some of the magazines of what passes for popu- 
lar occultism to abandon the delusion. 

The term good folk is a paradox. They were 
the demons or spirits of the unholy aborigines 
working in contact with the savages themselves, 
and it is good, exceedingly good, that there are 
no fairies loose in Britain to-day and that the 
art of summoning them is well-nigh lost. 

• • • • • ' • • 

This chapter completes all that I have to say 
for the time being. There is in this book much 
food for careful thought. Those who read it 
carefully will find in it keys to much that has 

* This practice is claimed to be possible of achievement by 
both Finn and certain Red Indian wizards. But no facts 
susceptible of proof have ever been adduced. 



ORIENTAL OCCULTISM 221 

puzzled them, and simple explanations of phe- 
nomena which have been greatly debated of late, 
The general reader will doubtless find the inci- 
dents the most interesting part of the book, but 
to the critical and those seriously interested in 
psychic matters, I commend a careful and rea- 
sonable study of the more scientific sections, for 
in this matter of things psychic both Spiritual- 
ist and Sceptic are upon the same quest. From 
different angles they are both seeking for the 
Great Truth. 








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